Orbhunt
by grammaguy
Summary: Butler may have been set back during the Viral Groudon crisis in Forina, but now, Magma really starts taking interest. When their plot fails due to an interruption by Brendan and May, how is the newly 'empowered' couple going to stop them?
1. Infinite Magma Theorum

**DISCLAIMER: I own Pokemon and all of Nintendo! Bow before me! Moah ha ha ha ha... okay, I don't really.**

**(Yawns) I guess I should apologize most humbly for the (frankly horrifying) wait. I don't like waits, really. You spend 33.45 percent of your time sitting in class wondering what happens next, 40.35 percent busily checking your e-mail for an alert, and the rest silently cursing at the author for being such a slowpoke. Uh. But anyway, new story, new rules, so be grateful. Also note that, since the Pokemon anime makes no references, I'll be setting the date here to present day. That's 2008, although most of the prologue occurs in 2007.**

* * *

OrbHunt

Prologue Part 1 - Team Magma Headquarters, Unknown location

Scythiona Vidon Xiona stood motionlessly beside the window, shades on, uniform unblemished as always. She wasn't particularly watching anything; it was more of a favourite pastime. Every so often one of the grunts milling about in the lower courtyard would glance up at her window, and, seeing her, and not knowing precisely _who_ she was looking at, wordlessly return to their duties.

She paid little or no attention to them. What her mind was on was her recently approved position - Lord Assassin.

Precious few in Team Magma knew of the division. It was founded in 1798 by a "shady councillor" within Team Magma, a time during which the organisation still had a various assortment of enemies in Hoenn, and also hence the title 'Lord'. Team Aqua was the most notable opposition. The idea behind the plot was that elite units of two or three supremely trained men - or women - would go out and stealthily eliminate anyone or anything important to any team not allied with Magma, often which presided in well guarded convoys.

The scheme had worked better than anyone had predicted. By 1998, the only threat left for Magma to deal with was Team Rocket and Team Aqua. Being the lesser of the two, Nactlie, Magma's current leader, decreed that Team Rocket was to disappear first.

The attack was brutal. The last base Rocket had stationed in Hoenn was just south of Lavaridge town. It was razed down to the last splinter, and from what all the reports told only two Magma grunts had been injured in the attack. The Rockets, in contrast, had nearly suffered the death of a full battalion and what survivors that had made it fled out over the sea. The last Rocket member she had seen that day was a girl, probably barely past adolescence, with a ridiculous mane of red hair, before the door on the Rocket helicopter closed and it lifted off.

As for Team _Aqua,_ however...

A quiet knock interrupted her musings. She was tempted for a brief moment to tell the messenger to go to hell, but she held it with an effort.

"Permission to enter?" came the gruff voice from outside the door.

"Permission granted," she replied, masterfully keeping the irritation from showing in her voice.

The door silently slid open from a quick press on the panel in front of her. The man standing behind it came in with a quick bow.

"It is a message from Maxie, ma'am."

"Then you do not need confirmation from me to speak."

He paused momentarily as he took in what she had said. "He wishes to hold a council presentation."

"And the purpose of this 'presentation' is...?"

"He told me only that it was some kind of mad scientist thinking he could make a Groudon. You'll understand he was stifling a laugh at the time."

"Mad, indeed..." she pondered. Then she turned back to the window. "When is the event taking place?"

"Four-thirty sharp," he answered.

"It is four-twenty-four now. Inform Maxie that I will be along in five minutes."

He retreated from his bow. "Actually, ma'am, he wanted to see you _now_."

She silently turned back towards the room, and strode right up to the man. Despite her gender, she was easily the man's equal in height. They stood like that, face to face, for a few seconds, then she pulled off her shades.

The man visibly jerked, and she didn't need to ask to know why.

Her blood-red eyes traveled up and down him for a fraction of a second. Then she spoke.

"Please, go back to Maxie," she said softly, and with deliberate menace, "and tell him I will be there in five minutes. You may leave."

The man was quick to oblige.

Scythiona allowed herself the luxury of a small grin, before quickly replacing her shades. That particular trick always worked.

* * *

The reinforced double doors of the council chamber opened at her approach. The noise of a few dozen councilors greeted her, as well as fresh filtered air, a welcome break from the stuffy air of her suite.

A figure made several frantic and angry hand signals to her from the other side of the balcony. Maxie. She didn't need any binoculars to know that he was pissed. She was guessing that the only thing that stopped him from demoting her was the fact that she was just one-of-a-kind at her occupation. And she was fairly good looking, too. She'd received more than 'a few' desiring looks from the other male blockheads ever since she had joined Magma. She quietly rejected pretty much all of them, obviously.

"What kind of time do you call this?!" Maxie exploded, tapping his watch as soon as she was within four metres. "I send a perfectly acceptable request and this coward here gets scared the hell out of him and tells me that you'll be coming in five minutes..."

Scythe took up her seat beside him and flashed him a disdainful look. "Well, then, the next time there is a meeting like this perhaps you ought to send a goddamned message beforehand. Then I might consider it."

Maxie glared furiously at her. "You're sorely lucky I'm not already escorting you personally out the front gates with a sign saying 'kick me' on your back!"

Scythe laughed and turned back to the centre of the hall, where a group of grunts were curiously setting up some sort of teardrop - shaped device. "You watch too many cartoons, Maxie. No-one could fall for that. And I'm too good to kick out, remember?"

Maxie decided to discontinue the conversation there, but continued muttering something about 'femme fatale' under his breath."

The grunts in the depression had finished setting up the larger device and were starting on two smaller ones on either side. One of them had placed a green square sheet on the opposite side of the depression. Another thing she noted was that their actions seemed to be directed by a purple haired man in a lab coat, who was holding what appeared to be a small glass capsule. There was something in it, but she was too far away to see exactly what it was.

"Scytheena."

She turned to regard Maxie. "Scythiona, for God's sake. Don't make me repeat myself."

"You know what this is about, don't you?"

"Oh, just something about a mad scientist trying to generate a Groudon."

"Yes!" Maxie punched the air in delight. "I can't wait to humiliate him! He'll be eating dirt for the rest of his days here at Magma."

"So he's been here for a while?" she asked, surprised.

"Yes. His name's Butler. He wouldn't give his first name, for some reason. He came here a few days ago, and when he'd told us his plan, we agreed with him a promise. In exchange for providing a lot of electricity, he'd make for us a 'living, breathing Groudon, right in front of our eyes'. Boy, we were laughing. One of the grunts had an asthma attack because of it. That was how hard we laughed."

"Why wasn't I informed?"

"It's on a need-to-know basis. That was part of our agreement."

Her index finger curled around her shade rims. It was a comfort thing.

Maxie's eyes suddenly lit up. "Look, he's starting!" Then he frowned. "Where the hell is my voice modulator?"

Scythe regarded Butler again, who was standing proudly with the capsule held up.

"Esteemed council of Team Magma!" he began, voice unnaturally loud. "Observe this fossilized remnant of Groudon!"

Scythe's brows rose in mild surprise. A fossil of Groudon?

"I have invented a device that would generate a living, breathing Groudon, right here, right now, from this one small piece!"

Butler certainly seemed confident. Scythe watched as he strode over to the larger of the three teardrops, and saw him gently place the fossil inside. Then he went over to a small control panel alongside it.

"I give you... a Groudon!" And then he pulled the lever.

The effect was immediate. The capsule with the fossil glowed a furious red, as did the top of the machine it resided in. Then a red lightning bolt shot from the top to the other smaller devices, and finally focused on the green sheet laid down earlier.

She couldn't see exactly what suddenly appeared where the lightning was focusing ("Why the hell did Maxie have to sit up here?" she muttered) but she knew for certain that it was black... and it was growing.

Then something – _everything_ - went horribly wrong.

Several massive waves of sparks erupted from the three machines in a way that was clearly not intended by Butler, if his gasp of shock and horror was any indication. A particularly large spark blew out the base of the machine with the capsule, and with sickening crack it crashed onto the floor, spouting masses of debris into the spotlight.

Butler shielded himself with his arm from the ensuing tide of smoke. When it had cleared, he desperately checked back to see what was left of his machine.

It wasn't a pretty sight. The three devices were lying in smoking heaps of charred metal, twisted, useless. The only thing that still seemed to be in one piece was the Groudon fossil, which was still slowly fading back to its original colour.

The small black lump on the green mat dissipated.

"**So that's a living, breathing Groudon?**" Maxie taunted, his voice loud and deep through the voice modulator. "**I must say, it's not quite as **_**big**_** as I had imagined!**"

"Nghhh!" Butler grunted. "I need a more powerful energy source to spark the regeneration process!"

"**Enough of your mumbo jumbo!**"

Butler gasped again in indignation at first, then growled angrily and threw himself forward onto his knees next to the fossil, which was now only lined with red. He grabbed it with his hands, but it was still very hot. As Butler gasped with pain and dropped the fossil, the councilor audience laughed.

"**We'll find Groudon ourselves!**" Maxie declared. "**You're no longer welcome at Team Magma!**"

"That's just fine!" Butler replied angrily, more to himself than to Maxie. Picking up his fossil in one hand, noticeably ignoring the pain associated with it, he stared at it.

"This isn't the last you'll hear from me!" he screamed. Staring at his fossil for a moment longer, he then stood and swept a glare at the rows of smirking councilors. Finally, with a contemptuous "Hmph!" he strode furiously out of the hall.

It didn't take long before the room was filled with bouts of uncontrollable laughter.

The two left out a side exit instead of using the public route.

"Well, that was fun, wasn't it?" Maxie gloated, obviously full of himself. "You should have seen the look on his face when I said that 'Mumbo Jumbo' bit..."

Scythe was paying no attention to him. Maxie was so divulged into his 'work', he hadn't bothered to see if it had yielded results. And it had - but the problem - well, only Butler knew what the problems were.

_"I need a more powerful energy source to spark the regeneration process!"_

That was what he'd said. Did that mean the Magma base couldn't provide enough power? And if not, what could?

"Permission to see Mister Butler?" Scythe interrupted.

"Eh?" The question had caught Maxie completely off guard. "What? Why?"

"Because..." She considered her next words. It wouldn't do to say 'I want to ask if I could help him'. Maxie would fly into a rage. So she smiled. "I'd like to give him a piece of my mind." That was easy, wasn't it? And she wasn't even lying.

Maxie grunted with dissatisfaction. "A pity. I was hoping you'd be around to see him kicked out of Magma... but I guess that's alright."

She gave him a small bow. "Thank you, sir."

He waved a hand dissmissively. "Get going then! His quarters are on floor 86-B."

She turned on her foot and ran in the opposite direction.

* * *

Floor 86 was a fitting place for someone of Butler's reputation - they were always going to get fired sooner or later. Usually sooner. Room B was right beside a noisy generator room. Maxie had obviously been extensive in his thinly veiled tauntings and whatever trick he could dream up.

She pressed a button on the pad next to the door and waited. A few seconds later the intercom crackled to life and Butler's voice came through.

"What?" he demanded. "Go away."

"I haven't even stated my purpose here," she said, amused. Men. They were all the same.

A snort from Butler. "What is it?"

"Your project might not be the failure Maxie believes it to be."

Another snort. "And how do I know you're not all making this up?"

"You won't."

"Then why should I let you in?"

"Because you won't know what I have to say untile then."

There was a short silence, then the door made several cracking noises and it creaked open, revealing Butler, still dressed in his lab coat, an annoyed expression plastered over his face.

She cocked an eyebrow. "Good even-"

"Spare me," he barked. "I don't need theatrics."

She paused briefly. "May I come in?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"_No._"

"Thank you," she replied, taking a step forward.

He put out an arm to stop her. "Did you hear what I just said?"

"Absolutely. You said 'no', as in 'no, I'm not sure'."

He pursed his lips in disdain. "Alright. Yes, I'm sure. Now, what is it?"

She coughed for effect. "It may take time to explain. It is either in your room, or not at all. You can trust me."

He narrowed his eyes at her, obviously not trusting her at all. But then he beckoned silently for her to come in.

She sat down in one of the plush chairs beside the table on one side of the room. Butler instead sat down on the bed opposite.

He crossed his arms. "Alright, you're inside. Now get on with it."

"Your project was to try and 'create' a Groudon, was it not?"

"See?" he seethed. "You're one of them. You said '_try_'."

"Yes, I did. You tried. But you failed. And I take it you know the obstacle that is stopping you?"

"Were you at the show? Then you already know that I need more power to do it. And there's my problem. I can't seem to find a big enough power source."

"How much would you need?"

"I don't know precisely."

"Hypothesize."

The crow's feet creased Butler's forehead. "About four atom bombs' worth might be enough."

She flashed a weak smile. "You came to us thinking we could produce that?"

"Well..." Butler hesitated, looking very Mareepish. "No, I didn't."

"I'm disappointed."

"Well, _excuse me_ for not meeting your lofty expectations."

"Is there anything I could do?"

"Well... no."

"Can you even create a device that can handle that kind of energy?"

Butler's eyes widened. "Of course! I once made a miniature battery that could store nearly forty-five gigawatts of energy! And that was in fourth grade!"

She smiled. "Good. Actually, I might have a solution."

Butler's head perked. "What?"

She leaned in closer to his ear. "There is a power source with that kind of power. All for free. A celestial body that can be seen in our skies for seven days only, once every thousand years. It is called the Millenium Comet. I take it that you've heard of it?"

"Sure. I heard about it whe-"

"Do you know what the legendary Pokemon Jirachi's connection with it is?"

Butler halted mid-syllable. "Uh... no?"

She leaned away and sat back in her seat. "Legend states that Jirachi, after awakening from its thousand-year slumber, would infuse the landscape surrounding its home, Forina, with incalculable amounts of energy, all from the Millenium Comet itself. I'm sure there will also be plenty of open spaces where Groudon can stay when you form it. All you must do is find a way to harness the energy, and the world is your Cloyster."

"Why are you telling me all this?" Butler asked, hostility seemingly gone.

She looked at him steadily, made a decision, and quietly pulled off her shades and the hood of her uniform, exposing her eyes and jet-black hair.

Butler whistled. "Y'know, it isn't hard to see why Maxie likes you to sit next to him at council meetings."

She averted her eyes and twisted a lock of hair in a way that would be considered very enticing by certain other males. "Thank you, and admire it while you can. It's not often I remove my hood. And to answer your question, I am telling you this because I think that your work may very well be a giant leap for Team Magma. Maxie is blind, so to speak, as are all the councilors who follow him as if he is a god. He's a capable leader, I understand, but he disadvantages himself with his beliefs." She fixed her gaze solidly on Butler. "That is why I'm helping you now."

His lips tightened. "Does Maxie know you're talking to me?"

"Yes, he does, although he thinks it's more a 'hit'n'run' kind of visit."

"Oh." Butler looked forlorn. "Won't he get suspicious if I see him next and I don't have a scratch on me?"

She grinned. "So you'd like me to hit you, then?"

He held up his hands quickly. "No way!"

Her lips met again in a smile. "Of course. Shall we just say that it was a more verbally based conversation?"

"I'll second that." He grinned self-consciously, then stood, the grin fading. "Now, I really must start packing. I'll see you when I leave, I guess. Should we keep in touch?"

"I agree." She reached into her pocket and drew out a pair of earpieces. She handed one to him.

"These are only prototypes," she explained, "but they are ultra long-range. They will only fail to receive each other's signals if you leave Hoenn."

Butler observed the small machine for a second, then slipped it into his pocket. "Thanks. Now, if you'll excuse me..."

"Of course." Before he could properly usher her out she was outside the doorway.

He nodded once, checked up and down the hallway for any eavesdroppers, then gently shut the door, leaving Scythe outside.

_He will leave tomorrow,_ she reasoned. _I will have to make sure that Maxie does not know of our agreement._

And with those final thoughts thought, she swept on one heel, and started back the way she had come.

* * *

**Oh, wait, I'm done? I didn't realise it. Never mind. To the faithful reader who has gone out of his or her way to read this pitiful excuse for a story, I have to admit that I can't guarantee regular updates. Sorry in advance. But then, I'm hoping most chapters won't be as long as this one.**

**Anyway, our favourite heroes (Brendan, May and co.) will not make an appearance until a while later, I presume. Sorry again.**

**Signing off,**  
**grammaguy**

**EDIT: 13/04/10 Heck, having written this two years, ago, I was actually quite surprised when I plucked up the courage to read it again and find that it was actually much better than I remembered it to be. Nevertheless, there were still some awful spelling mistakes which I eliminated immediately. I added in the occasional sentence too and removed all but one of the afternotes, but other than that this chapter remains untouched.**


	2. Chimney Greetings

**DISCLAIMER: Me, owning Pokemon? Go see your psychiatrist.**

**Dum de dum… yes, a new chapter. I'll have apologise for the outrageously long wait (you could grow a beard in the time it takes… and that's just for females) but at least they're of good quality. Of course, I can't say that on my own, 'cause I'd be biased. So I would like to thank the people who reviewed last chapter. It is your patronage which inspires writers to continue their work!**

**Oh, am I dragging on again? On with the show!**

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Orbhunt

Prologue Part 2 – Slateport Forest, Hoenn 

3 ½ months later

"_This is Vinyyl 4 Forest to Daruchai 1 Rubaia. Come in, Rubaia."_

"_Daruchai 1 Rubaia, receiving. Go ahead, Forest, over."_

"_Roger, Rubaia. Enemy authority sighted at grid square G13."_

"_Acknowledged, Forest. Rubaia out."_

Scythe silently unwrapped the pair of binoculars off her belt, and raised it to her eyes, checking her map for grid-square G13. Sure enough, there Team Aqua was, with tents erected around the clearing. The largest tent was obviously the officer's, if the number of muscle-bound guards posted around it was any indication.

Maxie had assigned her a relatively easy mission – to eliminate a Team Aqua officer. She'd hand-selected the team she would take, and had left before the sun had set. Travel had been uneventful, and they had managed to catch up to Aqua just as the sun was vanishing. It was now 10:31, which was the time to strike.

"_Vinyyl 2 Lakeside and Daruchai 2 Sa-ze, move in and take out the perimeter guards."_

"_Acknowledged,"_ the two replied.

No sooner had Scythe disengaged the link when three or four black knives cut through the darkness – black, to help keep them camouflaged, and also covered with a non-reflective coating. Scythe had never let down her high standards of secrecy. Guile was the best way to achieve victory, in her opinion. She even had her group wear gloves, to avoid fingerprints. _Evidence present, safety is but naught, _was her motto.

The knives embedded themselves into the necks of the three guards patrolling the grounds, the bodies hitting the ground with a dull rustle. As their comrades rushed to see what the fuss was about, five more daggers lanced away and five more fell.

Eight guards down, thirty-two more to go.

"_All units, move up to the forward tree line."_

There was a wordless agreement and seven hooded figures sprinted along the branches, coming to rest at the edge of the clearing, with a clear view of the camp. Scythe was disgusted at Aqua's horrible attempt at hiding the guards – their green camo uniform contrasted heavily with the white of the tent. As for herself and her squad, they were dressed in body tight black suits.

She picked up three knives in one hand from her belt, chose her ideal targets made a quick calculation, and tossed all three at the grunts outside the tent.

Each dagger hit an eye.

She waited a few seconds, and then a cry of warning was heard from the camp as the other guards ringing the tent spotted their fallen comrades. At once, at least twenty more followers raced out of the surrounding tents, all alert, all male. Scythe smiled. Men. They were all the same.

"_Fire at will, teams Vinyyl and Daruchai."_

A hailstorm of black shapes swished through the air towards the camp as every one of the assassins let loose.

One poor grunt was hit at least three times in the spinal cord, and collapsed, twitching. Another was stabbed in an unfortunate place between the legs, twice. (_That is another reason why it is bad to be a man,_ Scythe mused). Yet another one got a knife entering through the mouth, and the blade could be seen jutting out of the back of the head.

In less than eight seconds, all the guards were little more than a pile of dead corpses. Scythe took the brief moment of silence to inspect the camp. Once she was satisfied that there were no more grunts, she keyed her mike.

"_Surround the tent. I will deal with the officer myself."_

The assassins calmly paced towards the now empty campsite, taking special care not to touch the bodies. _Evidence present, safety is but naught._

Scythe pushed open the flap leading into the officer's tent. What was he trying to pull on her?

She lazily ducked a hastily thrown punch by the officer hiding behind the opening flap of the door. After seeing that his first strike was evaded, he threw another, this time at her face. She easily caught the fist and twisted it into a lock.

While the man grimaced in pain, with her free hand, she smashed a heavy blow into his face. Blood erupted. With a dull thump, he finally crumpled onto his back, cradling his broken nose.

She leaned in close to his face.

"What do you want?" he protested, obviously trying not to look scared.

She flashed him a seductive smile, and then with a flash, she kicked him in the stomach, straight through the tent fabric.

Her squad gathered around, mocking looks on their faces.

"W-what is this?!" the man demanded.

She leaned in close to his ear. "Maxie sends his regards," she whispered, before whipping out her long black combat knife and stabbing him straight in the chest cavity and into his heart. The man's eyes widened horribly and he clutched at her hand as if to pull it out. So she shrugged and did so, letting a small trail of blood trickle out of the open wound. Scythe waited for a few moments for the target to flop back and stop struggling feebly, then drew herself up to her full height.

"We are leaving," she ordered.

No more than two seconds had passed before the black figures vanished from the area.

* * *

"So, did today's mission go well then?" Maxie asked, not averting his gaze from the monitor on the wall.

Scythe snapped a quick salute. "As well as it always does."

There was a brief silence, during which Maxie turned away from the screen, sat down at his seat behind the desk, and sighed. For some reason, Maxie had called her to his office at the back of the Magma base at Mt. Chimney. It had happened on two occasions before - both times it was after a mission for Scythe to retrieve a precious item from Aqua. This time, though, there was no item to give.

"Do you remember Butler?" Maxie asked suddenly.

Scythe blinked. "Yes. What of him?"

"Hang on, I'm getting there. He did a presentation, didn't he?"

"Yes. I recall you finding it very amusing."

Maxie tried in vain to hide a smug smile, but something made it fade again. "Well, yeah, I guess I did. It _was_ funny, after all."

Scythe tightened her lips. "Were you even looking at all?"

"Well, _sure _I wasn't," Maxie said dryly. "Of course I was. When that black thing on the mat disappeared at the end when his experiment failed, I thought 'I guess his machine wasn't the perfect way to make a living breathing Groudon after all...'"

"That does not fit his description of needing a more powerful energy source."

"And that in turn doesn't explain why his machine blew up."

"What do you suggest he should have done?"

Maxie shrugged. "I dunno! Find a bigger space to put it maybe? I don't really care."

Scythe wasn't satisfied with that answer, but chose not to probe further. It wasn't why he had called her here.

He coughed. "Anyway, I was busy in my office just today, when you were gone, and then my private messaging phone rang. Guess who it was."

"Butler?"

"Don't be stupid! How could Butler know the code to get a message directly to me? It was one of the lower officers in charge of block B in the quarters area."

Maxie paused as if to give some effect. Scythe waited.

"He had a message for me from Butler. As it turned out, I'd forgotten to take that contact card off him - the one that allowed him to talk to the officer, right? - and he'd used it to tell him to give his message to me."

"What did the message say?"

"Quit interrupting me. He said in the message that he'd succeeded in his 'Create-your-own-Groudon' project."

Scythe raised a brow and cocked her head to one side. "Really? And what does that have to do with me?"

"He specifically asked to see _you_ at the end of the message."

The conversation had taken a wrong turn, and Scythe didn't like where it was going. Maxie's eyes narrowed.

"Why did he want to see _you_, then?" he asked.

Scythe had to think fast. Admitting that she had talked with him in his room was only going to escalate the problem further.

"I said I would 'give him a piece of my mind,' didn't I?" she asked him. "Well, I mocked him by saying he would never manage to succeed in his project, and he wasn't happy. So he said that when he did - and he said 'when' - I would be the first to suffer."

"Ouch." Maxie feigned being hit in the face. "Well, in that case, we'd better send along some troops for your support..."

Uh oh.

"I don't think that will be necessary," she replied hastily.

"What're you talking about? It's just to be safe. You know how the saying goes - 'better safe than sorry.'"

"But this is me you are talking about," she protested, trying to desperately stop him. If anyone found out about her agreement, Maxie would have her head. "You won't be needing anything else."

Maxie frowned at her. "Why is it that whenever you try to stop me doing something that involves you, I get nervous?"

Scythe sighed inwardly. Her last resort.

"It's because _this_ happens." And with a noiseless step forward, she pulled off her shades.

* * *

Scythe snapped open her wrist-mounted computer. As it transpired, Butler had been cautious enough to leave a message on her codeline as well. She had checked it when she had returned to her room, and had found it waiting, unopened. She wasn't trusting Maxie to leave her unmonitored, especially after what she had done, so she had decided to check it outside, where Maxie couldn't spy on her without her noticing.

_Hey, Scytheina. _("I must change my name sometime..." she mused.)

_Well, I've done it. I know I have. You know what I'm talking about. I did what you said I was supposed to, and would you believe the results? Nah, you probably wouldn't believe me. In short, it was this big kind of monster, in the shell of a Groudon, that has very disgusting insides. Trust me when I say it - it ate me, of sorts._

_I've been wondering how it came out like that. I had made a machine identical to the one I demonstrated with, except with a small pod to hold Jirachi in when I wanted it to take the energy. But the machine couldn't handle the energy, and several wire junctions blew. It kind of overloaded the system, in a way. But I had predicted that the machine wouldn't be able to stand the pressure – it was really just more of a test to see if my device for channeling the energy from Jirachi worked - so I made a backup plan, that being a far larger platform that I had installed in Forina prior to obtaining Jirachi. It had the same layout as the original - two small nodes for the positive and negative energy, and one large to handle both combined, and a battery, for any excess. And a switch, to turn it on and off at will._

_My companions - I'll have a hard time explaining them. There was a woman there, named Diane. We had been friends for a long time, about a month, I guess. I knew one in particular, his name was Max. It was him that Jirachi had grown most friendly to. Another I think was called... Ash? What a strange name. The other two were May and Brock. Well, I had to betray their trust and kidnap Jirachi when my machine was ready._

_The process was extremely painful for Jirachi, because I hadn't yet figured out a way to make it less vexing. Max had a fast growing bond to Jirachi, and he was horrified at the sight of him in so much pain. So his friend Ash shuts the machine down. _

_And there is where I think the problem is. My machine has three calcite-titanium alloy spikes at the base. These each send out one third of the total output in one beam each, which meets in the centre and then sends out a concentrated beam of energy, laced with DNA of the fossilized Groudon. It carves out the patterns on the ground that we see on Groudon today. The whole process is extremely efficient. But when Ash cut it off, the machine still hadn't finished its procedure, so a lot of the runes were still 'unstable' - namely, they hadn't gotten enough of the DNA from the fossil to produce a perfect copy._

_So the end result was a monster that leeched the life out of its surroundings, and absorbed other Pokemon to stay alive. But eventually we managed to beat it by reversing the machine to drain energy from the surroundings - including the Groudon. Ash told me it was quite a thing to see, but don't ask me how - I wasn't there at the time. _

_So now I get to the point of this message. I'm still willing to go ahead with the project, if you can convince Maxie to allow me. True, you might think that I don't have the energy I need any more, but you've forgotten the battery I had installed. The amount of energy I got was staggering, and the battery's quite full at the moment. There is, if my calculations are correct, at least enough for as many as _four_ more attempts. Yeah, that's a lot of energy, huh? A comet has so much of it, it's a wonder Jirachi's body doesn't explode from it._

_If, by some miracle, Maxie is convinced, then meet me on Route 117 on Thursday April 12th, in the grass behind the flower garden, at five-past midnight. I'll be waiting. Bring Maxie if you want. I think he might like to see these video tapes I have with me. They're mainly on the construction of my machine, but there are a few fragmented clips of the monster itself. Lucky me. There also might be another point which I want to say there, so you should hear me out there too. I'm just hoping I can brave your wrath when you hear it._

_Yours, Butler._

Scythe only closed the file with reluctance, weighing up her options.

What was she to do in a situation like this? Maxie would certainly not endorse any sort of agreement between the scientist and himself. Likely infuriated enough that her specialty trick with her eyes wouldn't be enough to get him to budge. Persuading him through gentle means would probably keep him on her side anyway, but the problem there…

Social matters had never been her forte.

Scythiona Xiona was born as the daughter of one of the assassins in 1979. As a child she had been very sickly, and required frequent doses of medicine to stay alive. Her name was partial to that - one of the grunts at the time had jokingly commented that she be called by a medicine; her name did sound like one.

Having a child in such a secret community was met with twin bouts of curiosity and elation, as well as scorn. The opportunity presented itself to create the perfect fighter, which had originally been conceived in the Black Souls, the nickname for the black clad assassins that Scythe currently commanded. Scythe knew she was far from perfect, but she was still much closer than the rest of the group, who were much less quiet and professional than her when at ease. She, however, was rarely ever at ease, and could probably do things twice as easily as they would.

The first test of her abilities was when she was just twelve - raid a hidden Rocket base near Sootopolis and steal some vital blueprints. It had gone better than expected, with nearly half of the Rockets dead from knife wounds and the blueprints vanished with no trace. 'Above expectations' was an understatement.

Her training had accelerated since then, and she had been boosted to full fledged assassin within nine weeks. The assault on the Rocket HQ seven years later had largely helped in her elevation to her current status as Lord Assassin, despite the nine year difference.

There were negative parts to it, of course. She had almost never seen a man who was _not_ supposed to be dead at her feet, nor did she know how to act around them, especially if they were not part of Team Magma. In her eyes, all you had to do to shake one off was a glare, which was generally sufficient. The ones that were particularly persistent more or less had the notion driven into them. Forcibly.

She shook her head to clear it. It wasn't going to help by lamenting her past mindlessly.

She looked over the message again. Butler had video tapes. Which meant...

She then looked up at the cliff base again, and made a decision.

* * *

Butler paced the ground in front of the trees. He'd probably paced the same spot several times now - the grass seemed a little more withered than when he'd first come late the previous evening.

He checked his watch. It had just turned 00:05. He could expect Scythe - and maybe Maxie - any moment now

He took the time left to him to make sure he had the box of tapes with him. They were, more or less. He hadn't actually had much time to check what they'd fully recorded during the battle, but hopefully Maxie would have been suitably impressed. He hadn't taken Butler's theory too seriously last time, so they had better have been good. If he didn't, Butler hoped Scythe hadn't had to drag him along _too_ literally...

A muffled _thunk_ interrupted him. As he checked what was in front of him, he was surprised to see a wriggling black bag that had dropped down from the trees above. Another black clad figure followed it, and Butler instantly knew who it was.

"Scythenia! I-"

The woman was holding her finger to his lips before he could go on. "It is _Scythiona._ I'll say it again - _Scythe-ee-oh-na_. Do I have to repeat myself?" She put her hand back to her side.

Butler grinned. "Don't worry, Scythieno! I won't forget!"

She did a mute roll of her eyes, then turned and knelt down next to the wriggling bag, and pulled on the zip. What emerged was a very confused and outraged Maxie.

Said person instantly bristled upon seeing the scientist. "What is the meaning of this?" he demanded. He cast a glance at Butler, and pointed at him accusingly. "You! You did this! I swear, by the time I'm finished with you there won't be any more scraps left for the Murkrow to peck at - !"

Scythe again came to his rescue with a finger to the lips, but then quickly placed them at her sides again.

Maxie glared at her. "You really _were_ a part of this, weren't you?"

She allowed him to stand up. "I saw possibility in Butler's plan. I only wanted to convince you."

"Darn fine work you've done so far!" Maxie snorted, turning to Butler again. "Alright, so what is your grand plan, then? Something about a D.I.Y. Groudon?"

Butler, a little shaken by the shouting, indicated the unruly pile of tapes on the ground next to him, knocked over by the man's flailing. "You could watch those. They'll explain everything."

Maxie glared at the box in distaste. "Too much work to get to the point. Tell me what they have first."

He shrugged. "Tapes of that D.I.Y. Groudon."

"Mmm hmm. Sure, yeah, right. Let's just grab the popcorn. What does this place look like? A home movie room?"

Scythe cut in. "With all due respect, sir. I think we actually can do as he says..."

"You come with subtitles?"

She cocked her head, amused at the expression, then pointed at her wrist-mounted comp. "It _is _capable of playing videos. You in-_sis-_ted on installing it yourself."

"You can't fit a tape into that," Butler interjected, obviously a little confused.

Now it was Scythe's turn to glare. _I've thought too much about men these last two days_. "You clip it into the socket at the bottom, and it can read the film directly."

Maxie scrunched up his eyebrows, then blinked. "So I did. I wonder why, though..."

"Something about football, if I remember correctly." She held up a hand towards Maxie and looked at Butler. "But before we do, I have to ask what that thing is you mentioned towards the end of the letter you sent me."

"He sent you a let-" Maxie began, but Butler cut in before him.

"Promise me you won't flip out first," he asked, slightly pleadingly. Scythe frowned, but nodded her head in affirmation. Maxie would probably flip out anyway, so she assumed the question was aimed at her.

Butler glanced uneasily around, and then, in a very quiet voice, whispered, "If you want, I can make modifications to my design to allow it to create a Kyogre as well, if you want."

The two members of Magma were silent for a moment, completely astounded, before Maxie's face lit up in furious patriotic rage and he stepped forward towards the scientist menacingly with the intent to injure. He was stopped with an arm by Scythe, but her own expression had gone dark with a cold shade of anger as well.

She was the first to speak again too. "Be careful with your next words, Butler. You are on a very thin crust right now."

Trying his best not to look terrified of the sheer rage roiling off Maxie, Butler continued. "N-no need for that! It... it was only a suggestion. You don't have to take it if you don't want to."

"Then please, explain your reasoning for suggesting it to us in the first place." Scythe continued to speak in a quiet voice which betrayed her current anger.

He shifted. "Well... I just figured with your plans for expanding the land, I thought that you would be limiting yourself by just getting Groudon. Team Aqua, if they ever came up with such a plan to get Kyogre back, would still be your equal. Having Kyogre would allow you to deal with the threat of the real Kyogre and Groudon still out there..."

Butler noticed that Scythe's expression had changed slowly into one of surprised and begrudging recognition. Seeing hope, he went on. "Kyogre would allow you to control the seas and make the job easier for your Groudon in destroying the oceans. It would mean you'd be able to populate the surface of the new land with plant life too, making more places for land Pokemon to live and such."

Scythe smiled slightly, possibly annoyed. "Forgive me. I was blinded by my patriotism for my faction. I see your idea now."

Beside her, though not attempting to rip the Butler's throat out any more but still with eyes narrowed, Maxie spoke up. "This would not sit well with the rest of Team Magma. Do you know what havoc this would cause if we announced it?"

"I'm well aware of your team's... preferences," Butler said, searching for the right word. "I'm sure with your great leadership skills you could persuade the masses to understand this plan. Eventually."

Maxie sighed and put his head in his hands. "While I loathe Kyogre, using it to destroy its own seas sounded wonderfully ironic." He grinned slightly, gleefully imagining the looks of the Aquean faces when they saw their own deity turn against them. "Well, Mr. Butler, you may have found an employer yet. When I see the tapes you seem so confident on and see proof of your success, I may seriously reconsider hoisting your course of action."

Butler wiped the sweat off his forehead in an exaggerated motion, grinning himself. "I was worried there! I was sure you'd have my head!"

Scythe crossed her arms. "If you don't hurry up already, we still might. Pass me one of the tapes, please. Let's see this plan of yours."

* * *

**This took an utter eternity to write! I can't believe I'm actually getting back at writer's block. Did you know that there's a page for it on Wikipedia? No, neither did I. Okay, now that's over and done with, for all you Hoennshippers, Brendan and May will be making their first appearance next chapter. I haven't even started that yet, so brace yourselves for another long, long wait. Sorry.**

**P.S. kudos goes to.. ah, Foo Bother Mucker, and her many alternate names I know her by, for giving me some ideas to fill in the plot holes I've got. I'd be stuck on the next chapter if it weren't for you!**

**Signing off,**  
**grammaguy**

**EDIT: 13/04/10 Wow. I did some HUGE editing at the end scene there when I realised that I'd practically dug a hole for myself by making a mistake in the plot. Good thing I realised it before the story went too far, huh? For everything else, I just improved the grammar in several places and ended up boosting the word count by about a thousand. Hell of a lot. It's made me also consider getting to work on actually writing up the next chapter, too. I may want to edit chapter 3 as well, just to fix continuity errors, but... we'll see. See ya!**


	3. Sarcasm with a Smile!

**DISCLAIMER: grammaguy (that's me) does not own Pokemon, or any seat in Ninetendo's grand plan either. I am but a humble fan who wishes to add to it's vast archive of works.**

**… It's not possible. How could I, grammaguy, quite possibly the most irregularly updating person on the planet, update Orbhunt? Well, if you thought that…**

**…. THEN I'M BACK!**

**Yessir. I've been laying off this story for far too long, and profuse apologies to the eagerly waiting users out there who missed it. But let's not dabble too long in that, you came to read, didn't you? Enjoy!**

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* * *

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Orbhunt – Chapter 1

Slateport City

The buzz of a posh, smug voice grated through the receiver. "So, say again, how long are you gonna' be gone?"

The girl holding the phone to her ear snorted, quietly so as not to disturb the other trainers in the room. "For the I-don't-know-or-care-how-many-times, Drew, _one week_. S'your skull gotten thicker since my Blaziken isn't knocking it all over the place anymore?"

The girl looked to be roughly sixteen years of age, with a slim, athletic body, accentuated by her figure hugging red shirt and bike shorts. She had strikingly beautiful blue eyes, glinting like sapphires in the artificial light. Her brown hair was split into a double ponytail, each aside her head, and topped off with a red bandanna decorated with a white Pokeball symbol. He foot was tapping impatiently on the floor.

"Now, now, May," Drew admonished, the teasing tone still not gone from his voice, "There's no need to be so touchy. And tell me again why you were heading back?"

May released a dangerously sounding low hiss. "Visiting relatives. I told you that I-don't-know-or-care-how-many-times too."

"Really?" Drew sounded about to burst. "I believe you were mentioning a past neighbour once. Did you have a crush on him once? Maybe – what was his name? – oh, yes, Bren-"

"You got five seconds to put down the phone before I go over there and kill you myself. Five."

"But May, there's still so much to do here in Johto…"

"Four."

"… and you need me to keep you mentally sane all the time…"

"Three."

"… you might get emotional problems…"

"Two."

"… suicide will follow…"

"One. Aaaaand…"

"HANGING UP! ASHIZL!" The line cut to the drone of static.

May placed the receiver back into its holder, smiling ruefully. Perhaps she could kill him another day. Even though she knew Drew was joking.

She stood up, sweeping some nonexistent dust off her shorts, and strode over to a group of plush couches surrounding a table on the other part of the Poke Centre's lobby. The single inhabitant of the seats did not move at her approach, which irked her. So, in a flash of incredible originality, she walked up to him and kicked him in the shins. Hard.

"Yow!" the boy yipped, immediately jerking out of his 'sleep' and rubbing the affected area. He glared up at her. "What was that for?!"

"For faking a disinterest in me," May drawled, crossing her arms. "I'd'a thought you'd've learned that years ago, Bren."

At sixteen years old also, Brendan Birch was quite a sight to see. Not particularly noteworthy in the height department, his most unusual feature was his eye colour - a vivacious red, unsettlingly similar to a ruby's. Another was his hair. A furry white hat, rimmed with a black headband, covered the majority of it, giving the illusion that his hair was white. The black sideburns that were not quite covered gave away his true colours, though. Brendan had never told her why he wore it, and May had never asked. It still mystified her, though.

As for his other clothes, it was a black long-sleeved shirt with matching trousers, and red and black sneakers. His bag was lying on the table.

He rolled his eyes. "Better learn it soon," he muttered. "That frickin' _hurt_…" But then the stoic expression was wiped off his face, to be replaced with a merry one. "So how's my nextdoor neighbour doing? S'been ages since I saw you last, May! How long's it been? Seven, eight years?"

"Ten," she corrected. "We were, like, six when we first met."

"Course, course." His grin widened. "Soooo… what brings you back to Hoenn? Missing the scenery? Well, I did when I skipped off to Sinnoh for a while, at least…"

"Oh, that, right. See, I was meant to be visiting relatives, see, and that's done already."

Brendan's grin faded ever so slightly…

"But I'm also kinda' here to catch a few new Pokemon. Like, Absol, Beldum, a couple others, you know."

… and it came right back again.

May suddenly found herself being steered straight towards the doorway.

"Well, then, let's not waste any time, then!" Brendan said happily, oblivious to her confusion.

She blinked once, and then stopped him, rolling her eyes. "Erm… actually, I wanted to have a battle first. Y'know, you and me, outside."

His grin, if it was possible, widened. "I like that even more! Gimme' a sec to heal my Pokemon first. I'll meet you outside."

He pranced off towards Nurse Joy's counter. May raised an eyebrow at how comical it was (and how he was completely unaware of it), then shrugged and walked outside, pulling her Pokeballs from her belt.

* * *

"Okay, so we got two Pokemon each, that okay?" Brendan said from the other end of the field. May nodded. His face changed to a much more serious one than she was used to.

"Alright, then, let's go. Mightyena, Swampert, go!" He tossed his duo of Pokeballs.

"Blaziken, Aggron, get up and at 'em!" And May threw hers.

When the light from each sphere had faded, four creatures stood on the field. May's Blaziken stood up straighter than usual after noticing Brendan's Pokemon, crossed its arms and darkly stared the opposition down. Beside him, Aggron simply cocked his head at the two.

Brendan's Mightyena growled at the challenging look from Blaziken, teeth bared. His Swampert worked his jaw and loosened his arms in preparation. Both looked well trained and powerful.

"What're we waiting for?" Brendan demanded. "Let's start! Swampert, Waterfall that Blaziken! Mightyena, Sucker Punch him too!

"Blaziken, Sky Uppercut that Mightyena! Aggron, Rock Slide!"

Chaos broke out.

Aggron roared as giant boulders each as big as a small car tore themselves from the ground around him, flying into the air. Blaziken wasted no time either, rushing forward towards the black wolf. Swampert spun as water came up from the ground and surrounded him, creating a rolling torpedo, and accelerated towards Blaziken.

Mightyena vanished.

Grunting in surprise, the fire bird skidded to a halt, looking around desperately for his opponent. As he did so, though, the wolf materialised right behind him and slashed with a forepaw critically across the back of his neck.

Infuriated, Blaziken turned around on a dime and delivered a thunderous punch straight under his jaw. The wolf howled as he was sent skyward, spinning wildly like a Catherine wheel.

Blaziken was about to jump up and follow his foe, but then the swirling mass of Swampert barrel rolled into him, smashing the Pokemon all the way across the field into a tree. He did not get back up.

Meanwhile, the rocks Aggron had summoned cascaded down onto the opposition. Mightyena, in the air, had no way to dodge, and was pounded relentlessly before being buried. Swampert, though taken by surprise, simply batted away most of the rocks like ninepins.

And then the chaos stopped, as quickly as it had started.

May chanced a look back at her started worriedly. The fire bird was groaning, trying unsuccessfully to wrench himself back onto his feet. After two tries, though, he gave up and slumped down, defeated.

"Mightyena and Blaziken are unable to battle!" Brendan declared, with no trace of triumph in his voice. Then he winked at May. "But we're not over yet."

She shifted uneasily. "Aggron, Iron Tail."

"Mud Shot."

As Aggron charged at full speed towards the Mud Fish, tail glowing with energy, a ball of sloppy mud formed at Swampert's open mouth. With a grunt, the starter blasted it straight at the Iron Armour Pokemon. Brown goop splattered over May, causing her to wince, but despite the obviously painful hit Aggron ploughed through the mud to score a direct hit on Swampert. The Water-type was knocked over onto the grass a few metres away, but quickly rose again, its face clearly showing irritancy.

"Water Pulse."

"Dragon Claw!" May yelled, fiercely trying to outpace Brendan.

Aggron's claw glowed with an eerie orange fire as he charged and slashed at Swampert's face, scattering droplets of water from the ruined Water Pulse. The Mud Fish, now thoroughly annoyed, counterattacked by uppercutting the Steel-type underneath the jaw. The Pokemon stumbled backwards several feet before regaining his balance, rubbing his jaw and glaring at the offender.

"Brick Break."

Her skin prickled and she swallowed. "Metal Burst."

Swampert lifted his arm above his head as it glowed, then rushed forwards and brought it crashing down onto the Iron Armour Pokemon's head.

A sickening '_crack_' sounded throughout the field, followed by a low moan of pain. The Water-type's eyes widened, and then he stepped back to glimpse his handiwork. Aggron's helmet had a deep crack running through the centre, and one of his horns had been broken, but the Pokemon's eyes were ablaze with fury.

He opened his jaws wide, a brilliant white light lit up inside, and with a strained roar, he fired it straight at Swampert. The Water-type attempted to dodge, but at this range there was no chance. The beam exploded, creating a kaleidoscope of light.

As the light faded, what was left was Swampert lying in a heap, exhausted and unconscious.

Brendan gaped. "Er… Swampert is… unable to battle. May is the victor."

May breathed a sigh of relief, and hurried over to Aggron. The Steel-type was clearly struggling to stay awake, but nevertheless he opened his mouth slightly to her, as if grinning.

She returned the gesture. "Sweet work, Rono! Let's get you some rest. I'll fix y'a good dinner today, am I right?"

He growled happily, then his eyes glazed over. May returned him to his Pokeball, doing the same for Blaziken, and then turned to see Brendan return Swampert as well. He looked up at her, preceding the widest grin she had ever seen.

"That's was _awesome_," he chimed. "Nice work training your Aggron! What was that move you used there?"

"Metal Burst," she replied simply. "S'more powerful if you hit harder with your last move."

"Cool. I'd better try that sometime."

"Yeah." She shifted. "We'd better go heal our Pokemon."

"Course, course! You lead." He was gracious enough to wave her past. "Soooo… what Pokemon was it that you wanted to catch?"

"Beldum, Claydol, bunch of others…"

He pursed his lips. "You know, I think that when I was at my house yesterday they were saying something about a large migrating group of them due to appear in a few days at Route 117 or somewhere near that."

"Cool." The duo stepped into the Poke Centre. "What, you're gonna' help me?"

He grinned. "'Course, dummy. That's what friends are for!" They handed in their Pokeballs to Nurse Joy, who turned away.

"Beldum are pretty tough to catch, I hope you realise," he went on. "The only move they know is Take Down, and they know that, so they'll try and run as soon as possible. But lucky for you I know Slateport forest pretty well. Convenient, right?"

May wasn't sure if he was being overconfident or not, and so muttered a quiet, "Yes?" with an eyebrow raised. She would find out tomorrow.

* * *

The door to the control room uttered a loud 'bang' as somebody unsuccessfully attempted to enter, forgetting how difficult it was to twist the handle on it. Scythe sighed.

"Turn it harder," she called.

"Wait, wait, I know… I _designed_ this freaking place, remember?" Butler stuck his head in. His nose was a rather nasty shade of red. He'd probably hit the door face-first. "And it's not my fault you have superhuman strength or something…"

"You spend twenty-eight years in difficult training and you tell me how it goes," she said dryly.

He stepped fully into the room. "A'ight, a'ight, I get it already, miss ninja." He looked somewhat fatigued. Working nearly twenty hours a day for the past several weeks had been quite harsh for Butler.

She let the comment pass and slipped into her arid professional voice. "We're almost complete with construction work, sir. You'll be able to fire your little lasers in two days at maximum, tomorrow if we get lucky with the synchronisation process."

He grinned. "Brilliant. Well, except it's not quite what I'd call 'little', trust me. Hopefully I won't have a random teenage kid come in and ruin the fun this time, eh?"

Upon receiving no response, he coughed. "So… I just gotta' ask, Scylla- no, no DON'T tell me," he added quickly, catching his mistake. "Sin- sa- si- it was 'si' something, wasn't it? Sit… sym… syn…"

"Scythiona Vidon Xiona," she finished. The dry tone had not left her voice yet.

"Bleh." He sighed. "Alright, I'm come clean. Maxie's spooks have found one of the Kyogre fossils which we need, and he's impatient to get it as soon as possible. He's giving you a day to get one, and you can figure out what to do to get it as well. Not much point in telling you how to do your job."

"More than enough time, I assure you." Inspecting her nails briefly, she asked, "Where is it, then?"

"Slateport Museum. Oh, and you're to leave _now_, he reiterates. He seemed pretty nervous when he said so, but it's probably nothing."

She shrugged and headed for the door. "Alright, tell him that I'm going now, immediately after I have chosen my colleague and equipment." She didn't need to start spooking out their distinguished guest, now, did she?

She managed to catch a slight 'phew' from the control room as she strode down the corridor.

* * *

**Okay, according to Jarkes the writing style ain't so different after all. Phew! False alarm!**

**But heck yes, I've finally updated it. Another long wait in store for you guys most likely, but I should be able to write some fairly large chunks every time I've no homework for the day after and the PC's free.**

**Oh yes, props to you if you get the huge lampshade hanging here. ;)**

**Signing off,  
grammaguy**

**EDIT: 08/04/10 Knowing that this chapter was a disappointing five-hundred words short of my usual target, three-thousand, I decided to add one little section right at the end there. Filler completely, I know, but I wanted to add the rest of the action to the next chapter, which WILL take a while to get done. If I can push myself to get that Arceus oneshot I still haven't finished before the Easter holidays end, then I sure as hell will at least try to make a start on updating everything else. A shame I'm rarely ever in that writing mood when I'm actually on a computer... T_T**

**EDIT: 17/04/10 Realising (again) that I'd made a pretty f***ing huge plot hole in creating the edit mentioned above, I rewrote Scythe's last scene so that I could explain the origin of the Kyogre fossil which will become very necessary in future chapters. It also means I'm gonna' have to add one more chapter in after this as well a setting the main arc back a whole day. Basically it involves Scythe, one member of the Black Souls, and that museum. I really think I'm starting to create too convoluted a plot right now. What do you think?  
**


	4. Fossil Syndrome

**DISCLAIMER: I once got given the Pokemon series for my birthday. Then I woke up and found out it was all a dream. :(  
**

**Y'know, if I got paid for every second I wasted not doing something productive, I'd probably be a millionaire. I'll admit to you readers, it was a pretty boring Christmas for me. Not keen on saying why, but a few days before the holidays ended, I said to myself, "I'm bored and the things I've been doing day-in, day-out for the past two weeks isn't satisfying anymore. What else is there to do?" And of course I glanced at my school bag, thinking I may as well get whatever work I'd forgotten was due done, and found nothing. _Then_ I saw my pencil case, with my trusty USB stick in it, and the gears started turning...**

**I'm actually rather proud I managed the write this in a couple of days. As I said last chapter, there's a lot of Scythe-exclusive action here, and hopefully it'll be the last section which doesn't involve M&B somehow. I think I'm gonna' find it very fun to write their conflicting thoughts on each other when they eventually start battling. Mweheheh.**

**Anyway, enjoy the chapter. It's loooooong overdue. =)**

* * *

Orbhunt – Chapter 2

Slateport City Museum

_Figures that Aqua would be here._

Scythe currently was lying prone on the roof of one of the houses overlooking the dock in Slateport. Like many places in the middle of the night, it was almost completely deserted in the streets. On her left, a few late-night seamen busy doing whatever work they were meant to be or coming back from a laid-back visit to the local pub passed by. On her right, the expanse of the sea stretched out to the horizon, with the island chain housing Pacifidlog town just visible as a dark black blot, marked with the occasional lighthouse beam.

Right _ahead_ of her, though, was what was important – the Slateport Oceanic Museum. Scythe adjusted her binoculars ever so slightly to get a better glimpse of the two figure standing outside the entrance. The two men's blue bandannas became more visible as she did so. It would make sense for Aqua to use the place, and the city in general, as a stage for whatever operations they were doing.

Well, she was here for the fossil, so why not crash their party while they were at it?

Keying the mike affixed to her ear slightly, she whispered, "Jaeger, get yourself up to the roof the museum and wait right over those two, please."

Jaeger, who was currently lying in a similar posture on the topmost floor of the Slateport lighthouse, didn't reply verbally, letting his action of silently rappelling down the side of building speak for him. Letting himself off and pulling his line down with him, he traversed the dark side of the square in front of the museum and began climbing the side of the building to the left of the museum with grace not to dissimilar to Spinarakman. Hoisting himself onto the second-story balcony, he gave a barely perceptible neck-roll, and jumped right over the alleyway separating the two structures, landing with a grunt. He padded to the section of roof over the two now-chatting men and gave a thumbs-up to her.

Her move now due, Scythe stood and jumped down from the roof of the single-story she'd been on to the ground. She went along the opposite side of the square Jaeger had gone along, and waiting not too far from the Aqua grunts, crouched down in a ready stance.

"On my mark, we take them out," she murmured quietly. She waited until one of the men yawned and the other closed his eyes in an attempt to give them some rest before then murmuring, "Mark."

Jaeger leapt from his perch atop the roof at the same time Scythe set into a sprint for the duo. The man who had had his eyes closed managed to open them for a second, seeing a black figure racing right for them, before Jaeger landed behind him and gave him a solid hit on the side of the head. He dropped like a stone, unconcious , just like he'd wanted. The other man, hearing a thump, blinked uncomprehendingly at his fallen comrade and the person above him before Scythe then put him into an uncomfortable sleep as well.

Staring at the sleeping Aquas, Scythe took the time to remember with dissatisfaction the order to not kill any obstructions in completing her objective unless absolutely necessary. While it would draw less attention to their operations, she did feel annoying that she could not exact justice on Aqua for what their blasphemous ideas. But she cast it off without a second thought.

She ordered Jaeger to take the main doorway while she climbed the wall to get to the skylights. After doing so, she flicked the vision mode on her sunglasses to thermal and cast her gaze on the room inside. There were no Aqua grunts in this room, except for a single one dozing in a chair behind the glass counter. Jaeger was quick to relieve him of his radio and Pokeballs and hide them accordingly. He wouldn't be a threat if he woke up that way.

Scythe moved on to the next set of windows while Jaeger remained in the lobby. Looking in this one, she could see that there was a whole bunch of Aqua inside, one of whom, to Scythe's amusement, was a girl. Two of the men already had their Pokémon out – a Golbat and a Crawdaunt. None of the mean seemed to have noticed that their friends outside had been knocked out. She considered her options. The two assassins could probably take on the Aquas on their own, but it would likely compromise their operation. So it would have to be stealth unless they were discovered.

She noted that several aisles of the museum were out of the view range of the Aquas, but after watching for a minute or two she saw that all of them were covered by a patrolling group walking around the displays. She'd have to time it. She ordered Jaeger to advance into the room and quietly crawl around underneath the level of the glass cases when she reported that it was safe to do so.

To her regret, though, Scythe wasn't able to account for the random thoughts that can occur in the minds of live creatures.

One of the Aquas of the patrol who had just passed Jaeger's position started to talk in hushed tones with another member. After a second or two, the person he'd been talking to turned around and headed right for the door to the lobby. Scythe wasn't able to notice the change fast enough to give a warning to Jaeger before the grunt walked right into Jaeger's alley, turned his head to look around for a moment while he passed, and caught a glimpse of the black clad Magma officer.

Stopping himself just inside the doorway, he gave a "Huh?" in surprise and rushed back into the alley to look at Jaeger properly, who had just started to turn his head around to see the cause of the exclamation. The man stared speechlessly for only a moment before instantly screaming out an alarm to the other occupants of the room and pointing at the assassin. He was silenced a fraction of a second later when a knife thrown by Scythe buried itself in his ear, but the damage was done.

Half of the Aqua grunts and both released Pokémon looked up to see who had thrown the knife while the other half immediately began running for the alley their comrade had suddenly dropped dead in. Jaeger quickly rose up from his crouched position and lunged for the trio of onrushers, who were fumbling while trying to let out their Pokémon. He stabbed the first man underneath the chin, and wrenched it out again to impale the next in the chest. The other member of the patrol had just enough to time to snap his Pokeball open and release a sleepy-looking Lunatone before Jaeger set upon him as well. Seeing its master in peril, the Lunatone fired a hasty Shadow Ball at the assailant, but the Magma peon saw it coming and hauled his victim up as a human shield, letting the Ball explode against his back, searing it. Ignoring his scream of pain, the assassin threw the man against the horrified Pokémon, reached over, and punched the crescent as hard as he could just above the eye. The Lunatone's eyes dulled as it was knocked out, and Jaeger withdrew his fist, rubbing it and grimacing in pain.

Meanwhile, Scythe had instead opted to leap down from the window, landing right on the Golbat, pinning it to the ground, stabbing it between the eyes and killing it without mercy. One of the Aqua grunts shouted out an order to his Crawdaunt while the female hissed and released a Carvanha in a flare of red light. The lobster fired a Bubblebeam at the Lord Assassin at the command. Pushing herself out of the way of the explosive bubbles with her impressive leg power, Scythe sidestepped the attack and leapt forward, kicking the Crawdaunt hard in the head and causing it to howl in pain. The Aqua girl had ordered her own Pokémon to try a Bite attack, which proved to be a mistake. Scythe caught the frog-hopping fish mid attack by clamping both hands down either side of its jaws. Despite the pain of the abrasive skin rubbing up against her palms, she succeeded in hurling the piranha straight into a glass case of a Wailmer skeleton, burying the poor fish under a ton of cartilage and bone. Seeing that their Pokémon had been wasted, the two grunts turned on their heels and ran straight for the locked doorway to the next room, hoping to find some safety. Scythe, already irked at her failed attempt at stealth, nicked two knives from her belt and tossed them, hitting the duo square in the spines and dropping them. She then turned around on a dime and punched her combat knife into the eye of the Crawdaunt, who had recovered from his dazedness and was in the act of sneaking up on her with a charged Crabhammer ready. The lobster twitched once and died.

The two assassins remained tense as they observed the room for any remaining hostiles. Seeing none left, they slowly relaxed and let out the breaths they had unconsciously been holding.

"Don't ever make me punch a piece of rock ever again..." Jaeger muttered while tending to his bruised knuckles.

"Quiet."

She rushed quietly over to the doorway to the next and last room. If there were any Aquas remaining in there – and she was very sure there was – there was no way they could have missed all the noise the previous commotion had caused. She took out a small mirror from her belt and crouched down to insert it underneath the door.

Sure enough, through the small sheet of reflective metal she could see at least three grunts inside the room, all patiently focusing on the door with a sort of anxious determination. As well as them, their Pokémon consisted of a trio of Zubat and two Carvanha, also keeping their gaze fixed on the door. After seeing that one of the Aquas had spotted the mirror and was glancing at it warily, she quickly withdrew her hand and stood up.

Deducing that the person would soon notify his friends of the spying and shift their positions accordingly, she pulled out a small cylinder from her hip pack. She pointed at Jaeger and mimed rolling it underneath the door, tapping her microphone in the process, with the man nodding once in confirmation. Scythe then turned around, took a running start at the side wall, and began to scale it, using the expertly-drawn pictures of ancient sea creatures as a footholds, before pulling off an impressive wall jump and snagging the edge of the skylight with her hands. Pulling herself up, she nodded at Jaeger one more time, and moved on to the last – and largest – set of skylights at the end of the building.

Leaning down to get a good view on the grunts, who were still focusing on the doorway, she activated her mike and tapped it twice and retreated from the skylight temporarily.

A moment later, a gasp and a shout of, "Flash! Get do-" came from the room before the voice was drowned out in an enormous sharp _bang _which was clear even through the glass windows and an accompanying white flash.

_Someone down there has a brain. Pity._

Smiling slightly, she glanced back through the pane to see the Aquas clenching their heads in agony. Of the Pokémon, all three Zubat had been knocked out outright, their sensitive hearing completely overloaded, and the Carvanha appeared as dizzied as the humans did.

She keyed her mike. "Good toss. You hear two knocks, then you can come in."

She shattered the glass with little effort and jumped down. With their ears disabled as they were, the grunts barely heard a thing. Scythe carefully walked over to the group, unsheathing her knife as she did so, and stabbed each one by one underneath the neck, ignoring the blood coating her hand, and gave their Pokémon a similar fate. With the last Aqua presence in the museum destroyed, Scythe briefly cleaned her knife and hands on one of the dead grunt's uniforms and gave the doorway two sharp raps. Jaeger emerged, observing the carnage in the room, slowly frowning at the scene.

"A little bloody, wouldn't you say?" he asked idly, gesturing at the ichor pooling on the floor. "Not like you usually do."

She shrugged. "Today is a momentous occasion for Team Magma. Anything less than a grand entrance would not do."

He nodded. "Yes, I see. So, what are we looking for in here?"

"That." Scythe pointed at a ceremonial-looking glass case at the other end of the room, sat atop a pedestal. Inside it was what looked to be a small bulbous rock, but Scythe knew was in truth a remnant of the powerful Pokémon guardian of the sea, Kyogre. She grunted at the whale's name. As a servant of its Earthen-based antithesis, Groudon, she detested all manner of connotations related to the creature, but snickered at the idea that it would soon help to bring about their goal anyway. Flicking her sunglasses to infrared again, she was satisfied to learn that no web of lasers shrouded it. Perhaps that same disdain was a good thing in this case.

Halting in front of the box, she turned to Jaeger. "Laser cutter."

He knelt down and rummaged in his backpack and produced a long metal bar, with an emitter at one end and a small suction device at the other. Securing the cutter at the latter end, she carved a neat hole in the glass and pulled it out. Reaching in, she grasped the fossil with a single slender gloved hand and pulled it out. It was surprisingly light given its bulk, and had a curious, shiny look to it, which she guessed was due to being worn smooth by hundreds of years exposed to water after emerging from the seabed somewhere. She looked at for a moment longer before handing it back to her partner, who carefully stored it in his backpack again. She sighed with relief and straightened up.

"We are leaving," she ordered.

Twenty seconds later, the museum hall was to be graced with complete silence yet again until next morning, when the first staff members would return to work and see the chaos that had unfolded that night.

* * *

May opened her eyes blearily… and then shut them again in discomfort because of the blinding light. Opening them more slowly now to let her eyes adjust, she reached under her pillow for her Pokenav, and squinted at the time. Ten past seven. Groaning dramatically, she rolled her head to glare at the offending sunlight streaming through the window before giving up the glare war and staring at the ceiling instead, considering the dream she had just had.

"An Ampharos and Umbreon flying on top of a Latios and Latias, being chased by a crazy axe-wielding Typhlosion," she muttered. "I must be going mad."

"Well, that's the dream world for you!"

May yelped like a frightened Poochyena and jumped as well, hitting her head on the same ceiling she'd been staring at a few seconds ago. After rubbing her head in slight pain, she turned her smouldering glare on the floor below her bunk and scowled at the black-haired kid grinning triumphantly up at her.

"Well, that worked out nicely," Brendan said sweetly.

"Brendan, you nearly killed me there, I could've –ugh!" May beat the duvet with her fists and submitted herself to the raucous laughter that he emitted after her outburst. "Why did you have to move in next to me all those years ago?"

"That's called Laser-Guided Karma, my dear." Brendan's grin slowly faded into a less-mocking, genuinely nice smile. "Anyway, I suggest you'd better get up and get ready. We got some Beldum to catch and they generally don't like to stay out too long into the day, secretive as they are. Plus, we should get going before the police start to isolate Slateport or something overly excessive like that."

She groaned again, realising he was right. She began to slide off the bunk, but stopped when she realised what he'd just said. "Eh? Why would they block off Slateport?"

He looked up from pulling clothes out of his bag, a concerned look on his face. "Something really nasty happened down at the museum. I think something like over a dozen people were found murdered there, and a prize fossil was stolen. The dead guys were Team Aqua's goons, too."

She frowned, remembering her scuffles with the dastardly group of Team Aqua. "Seriously? Who did it? What were they doing there?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think anybody knows right now." He chuckled. "The museum manager seemed more worried about what it'd do to tourist visits and company losses than who was actually responsible."

"But admission there's free…"

"Not the admission prices. Donations. Would _you _donate to a museum that's gonna' get wrecked every other day and just waste your money?"

"Well, not if it's actually _is _going to get wrecked every other day. I would otherwise."

He smiled. "Bad thing is most people don't agree with you there." He sighed. "But nothing you can do about it. It's a pity – I liked that museum. But anyway, get dressed, we gotta' leave. Beldum aren't gonna' be waiting for you forever."

He vanished into the bathroom to change, and May let out a huff. Waiting for _her_? How slow did he think she was?

After a short period of getting dressed, an argument where she accused Brendan of trying to spy on her while she changed (which he wasn't), having breakfast and leaving the Pokémon Center, Brendan took a short detour to the docks to let themselves have a look at the museum. Sure enough, a small crowd of assorted staff members and local citizens anxiously milled around outside. A pair of police officers stood guard at the entrance, with a harried-looking museum curator arguing with the Jenny there. A single officer and a Growlithe sniffer appeared to be inspecting the roof.

"Looks big," Brendan murmured.

She glared at him. "Thank you, Captain Obvious."

He laughed. "You're welcome! Let's get going."

And so the duo set off for the woods north of Slateport, hardly anticipating the drama that was to unfold.

* * *

**So, that's it for now. Just to let you know, the next chapter is actually nearly done (I'd held off on updating this until I was sure I could finish the next one within a reasonable period, deliberately so I didn't end up just laying off finishing it). I make no promises when I can update next. Perhaps now that I've remembered how refreshing it is to write I might start doing it more often. ;)**

**So! Till next time!**

**Signing off,**  
**grammaguy**


	5. Pushing Back the Veil of Shadows

**DISCLAIMER: If I owned Pokemon, I'd give it away to someone better qualified to handle the series. Good thing I never have and still don't!**

**Hey all, readers!  
**

**So, I feel like I should explain a few things regarding my updating. What I think would be acceptable for me would be once a week, or something to that effect. It seems slow even to me, but then I don't want to suddenly find myself with a billion things to do and thus end up missing the deadline too often. A week, I hope, would give me a reasonable amount of time to write it and proof-read it, so it's sort of a happy medium. I'd be a rather happy person if this ended up turning into a good habit. =D  
**

**So, new chapter - May and Brendan discover the dastardly Magma's scheme! How will they react? (of course, any half-genre-savvy person would see it coming from a mile away, but try not to roll your eyes too much). Enjoy!  
**

* * *

Orbhunt – Chapter 3

Route 117

The relatively large herd of Beldum slowly began to break up by around nine o'clock. The individual members began to disperse into the forest, where it would be safer from prying Trainer's eyes.

Brendan's plan was simple. Catch one of the little metal Pokemon as they retreated and where they wouldn't get beset by multiple Beldum at once. If not, go back to the shrinking main group and hope there was another one heading in their direction. May didn't want to push her luck by dragging it out any longer than necessary and risk losing a rare catch, so she needed to get this right first time.

The blue machine paused to inspect a small circle of metal (a coin) she'd laid down on the grass. Feeling that now was her chance, she tapped her eagerly waiting Blaziken and whispered, "Get him. Weaken him with Blaze Kick and follow with False Swipe."

The Beldum's hearing must either have been very sensitive, or it had detected her by other means, because it looked up right at Blaziken as he leapt out to engage the wild Pokemon. Flames ensconcing his right foot, the starter lunged to try and deliver a huge blow to his target. Almost appearing panicked, the Beldum hastily used a weak Psychic on him, encasing him in a blue aura, to try and halt his advance. Both Steel-type and Fire-type vibrated, trying to maintain the Psychic attack and trying to break through it, respectively. Eventually, the Blaziken's superior stamina won out and the blue glow faded with the Beldum drooping in fatigue. The chicken roared as he smashed the leg of metal with his own with all his might.

The flames faded to reveal a badly injured Beldum, trying to limp away. But Blaziken still had another order. Claws glowing a faint white, he swiped at it repeatedly, leaving it only just conscious and on the verge of fainting.

"Now! Pokeball, go!"

May tossed her Ultra Ball at the Beldum, and prayed. The capsule impacted with an audible _clack_, and the Beldum looked surprised a moment before it shimmered into red light and was caught by the ball. Both trainers and the girl's starter stared at the ball intently as it wobbled around, trying to lock the Pokemon in. Eventually, the wobbling stopped and it emitted a happy sounding chime, as if to celebrate. May sighed with relief and Brendan chuckled at her obvious enthusiasm.

"Congratulations," he… congratulated. "You just caught a Beldum! And they're really hard to find these days, too. You're a lucky gal. So! One down, two more to go."

She picked up the ball and giggled. "If they go this easy, I could manage more than a couple more additions."

"The more, the merrier!" He paused. "Though, what the heck was up with that 'Pokeball, go!' business? You sounded so corny I thought you were a maize crop."

She stopped and blinked. "Err…" She coughed. "I blame my travels with Ash. So there." She rolled her eyes. "And that joke was incredibly bad. Don't ever say that again."

He gasped. "Oh gosh, you're right. I should never have said that. You're a lot cuter when you're in a bubbly mood like that, you know."

Despite her relative immunity to flirting jokes thanks to relentless fanboys, she felt the slightest blush warm her face all the same. "Oh. Well. Right. You're a lot less annoying when you're in pain, so does that mean I should punch you?"

"I would be _honoured_ if you punched me," he said, obviously taking the retort in stride and giving a mocking bow.

She grunted and returned to her stoic demeanor. "You're as bad as Drew sometimes. We should probably get moving now. I wanna' go see Fallabor Town again. The hot springs there were nice."

Brendan grinned at her, but before he could think of an appropriate reply, a loud fiery roar from somewhere further north of them drew both of their attentions. A pillar of fire rose into the air, lasting for naught but several seconds before collapsing. An ominous red shade appeared to silhouette the treetops before decreasing somewhat. It did not fully fade.

"Somebody didn't put out their campfire?" Brendan started, looking confused.

"Campfires don't blow up," May muttered. "That was a Pokemon attack."

His frown deepened. "I know. Dunno' about you, but I'm going over there. You got a Water Pokemon on you?"

She shook her head. Brendan hmm'd. "Okay then, guess it's just Swampert then. Let's go."

* * *

The fire, as it were, turned out to be less serious than Brendan had feared. The flames licked at a large patch of grass which had blackened from the heat, and had done the same to a group of bushes, their husks lying twisted and dead. The burnt area itself looked to be fairly small, but the fire looked intent on burning the nearest trees, as well. He released Swampert. It would get too dangerous to fight it if that happened.

"Surf!"

Cracking his jaw as he usually did, Swampert fired a tremendous blast of focused water at his feet, which quickly grew into a miniature tidal wave. The resulting deluge soaked the entire area in cold water, dousing the flames immediately and throwing up a fine mist of steam.

May, after waving her hands about to try and dispel some of the vapour, looked around. "I think it's all gone now."

He grinned. "And you told me I was being obvious. Swampert, good job."

As Swampert gave a smug 'harrumph' and lay started sniffing the air, May strode forward onto the black, soggy ground, seeing something odd lying in the middle of the destruction. She stared at it in shock. "Hey, Brendy, look at this."

"Hmm?" Moving to stand beside her, he frowned down at the object. "What is it?"

"It… it's a Beldum. It's dead," she stuttered, looking at the lump of melted blue metal lying in the centre of the black area. "Someone must have tried way too hard to knock it out…"

"It is? It's dead?" a sudden male voice sounded out. Startled, both trainers looked around for the voice's owner, to find a figure standing not too far in front of them, concealed by steam. It was possible to make out a fairly tall silhouette. Brendan felt vague surprise at the other person's prescence, but swiftly reminded himself that this was probably to be expected – Beldum were rare, so it must have attracted more trainers than just them.

May openly snarled once she'd gotten over her shock. "Yes, it's _dead_, you idiot." Striding forward, she roughly grabbed the person who was at least a head taller than her by the shirt and shook him furiously. "What were you _thinking?_ Using that much fire in a place like thi-"

She choked on her words once she realized who she'd just grabbed, and stared at the garment he was wearing. The grey rocky **M** imprinted on the grunt's jacket stared implacably back at her.

The man underneath the hood looked initially surprised at her directness, but then scowled at her and rolled his eyes. "Look, lady, please, let go, so nobody gets hurt. I don't wanna' have to-"

"TEAM MAGMA!"

The grunt suddenly found himself in the awkward position of lying face-first on the floor, with an enormous throbbing pain in the left side of his head. May stood over him, dusting off her fist in a threatening manner as he groaned, rolled and clutched his head in agony. Brendan and Swampert both stood behind and stared at her, bemused.

"Alright, spill the beans. What are you assholes doing here?"

An unintelligible moan from her unfortunate victim.

"I can't hear you. Speak up!"

Another moan.

She managed to sound off a convincing growl. "Speak up or my Blaziken gets a go on you."

His response was to feebly reach for the Pokeballs on his belt, which he didn't get very far with. May response to _that_ was to roll him over with her shoe and give him a huge stomp on his own balls, so to speak. The man's eyes bulged out of their sockets and he squealed in a most ungentleman-like manner as May continued to abuse him to the best of her power.

"Well, you gonna' say anything now? Are ya? ARE YA?" Kick.

"Um… May?" Brendan was almost scared about what would happen if he interrupted her at the wrong time.

"Guess all that time crawling in the dirt made your skull really thick or something, huh?" Kick.

"May?"

"And that's good, 'cus that means I can stamp on your fat head as many times as I want!" Stomp.

"MAY!" Brendan roared.

"WHAT?" she retorted. "I'm in the middle of a rant, here!"

He coughed. "Ah, maybe he can't talk because he's too busy wheezing in pain or something? I think you're being a little harsh…"

The grunt managed to groan a meek agreement, and promptly shut up when May walloped him again.

"The last time I saw Magma," she said in a controlled tone, "I was captured and nearly killed by their leader, and we only got out of it because of some orb that they'd stolen which let Pikachu control Groudon and he saved us all. And I've no doubt they would've tried to just dry up all the oceans and leave us to rot in the middle of a desert somewhere if they'd had their way. They're up to something here, I know it!"

"Catching Beldum, maybe?" he offered dryly.

"Besides that!" she exploded. "God, you couldn't recognize trouble if it sat on you!"

"I think I'd know if you sat on me," he said sweetly. He couldn't resist.

It took her a moment to digest what he'd said. "I'm not trouble! I'm just forceful! And that's beside the point! The point is, these guys-"

"What in Groudon's name…?"

Derp.

May paused mid-kick and slowly turned her head around to see a second astonished Magma grunt who had entered the clearing watch, and take in the sight of, her beating the snot out of his comrade, in the middle of a freshly burnt clearing, with Brendan and a mean-looking Swampert standing a safe distance away behind her.

Making a few quick deductions, he quickly put two and two together and made the very reasonable decision that fighting these two would probably not be the greatest idea ever, and nor would they be too good for the safety of the operation he was involved in. And so, after his moment of clarity, he raced away as fast as he could in the opposite direction to warn everyone else, much to the chagrin of the brunette he was leaving behind.

"Get 'im!" May screamed hysterically, and roaring a battle-cry, she gave chase.

Brendan remained where he was, frowning as she vanished. Chuckling, he walked up to the grunt she had abandoned. "Don't mind her; she's got this temper problem. She was a lot better when she was younger, trust me."

The grunt groaned a reply.

"I could always try for you," Brendan offered. A moan and a weak hand gesture. "What, you think she's gonna' try and murder your whole family? That's daft. She'd never do that." Another groan. "Yeah… girls are weird things. Must be something in the Y-chromosome that spares us from it."

A rather sharp, amused groan. "You can see a scythe? As in, Death's Scythe? Come on, I ain't gonna' kill you. I'm still gonna' have to knock you out so you don't go causing more trouble though, okay?" A weak protest in the form of a shaken head. "Good." A strong jab to the solar plexus and a miserable whine later, the grunt lay sleeping at Brendan's feet.

"Off to glory then." He struggled not to burst into laughter again as he hurriedly followed along May's trail of destruction.

* * *

The sixteen-year old managed to catch up to the runner just as he tried to slow down for a rather steep embankment which looked to be the lip of a valley, filled with yet more forest and something May couldn't quite identify before performing a full-on body slam on her target, pinning him to the ground. A short scramble came next as both combatants tried to get the annoying girl off and keep the traitorous man down, respectively. Eventually, as well-built as he was, he shook her off with a well-timed skull bash, stood up and gave her a huge glare which even had May faltering slightly.

So she called Blaziken out to give him an _even bigger_ glare in return.

The grunt stared at the starter before sighing in a resigned way. "It's sucks being a grunt. Why can't they ever give me a better Pokemon than a Zubat?"

"It sucks being evil in general. That's why. I just can't understand you guys at all sometimes," she snarked. "Tell me what's going on and I might not kick you as hard as your buddy."

He shrugged. "I'm just on patrol duty. I don't know any more about what's going on down there," he said, looking at the platforms down on the treetops which sparked something eerily familiar within May's memories, "Than you do. Need to know basis, all that."

He narrowed his eyes at her. "I swear I've seen you before somewhere, though." He snapped his fingers in recognition. "Yeah, you were in one of the pics in that presentation we got shown once. The one-" He shut his mouth, realizing what sensitive information he'd almost revealed.

May's brows furrowed. "Who's slideshow? Who made it? Why was I on it?"

"I… can't tell you any of that." May's Blaziken cracked his knuckles. "Nope, still can't say. There's this guy - _girl_ in the higher-up Magmas who'd outright slaughter me if I said anything more, if not get one of her cronies to do it. I think I'd prefer staying alive."

She gritted her teeth. She couldn't kill him, not without having all sorts of repercussions coming down on her head. "So, what am I going to do with you?"

"Let me go?" he offered mildly. Clearly as a joke, but May wasn't in a sociable mood right now.

"How about sleep, then?" Surprised at the new voice, the man turned just in time to see Brendan stab him with a straight finger into the side of the head, on the nerve cluster behind the ear. He dropped like a rock. Brendan propped the grunt up against a nearby tree after making sure he wasn't faking.

"Is that your answer to everything?" May snorted. "Put it to sleep?"

Brendan nodded sagely. "You ask me if I answer questions by putting the asker to sleep. Now ask yourself - would that be a good thing to do if I would have said 'yes' otherwise?"

"You know what I mean."

"No, it isn't, then," he said lightly. He looked down into the valley below. "So, I'm guessing you know what those things are," he continued, indicating the circular platforms May felt so uneasy about.

She stared at it more intently now that she had some time to do so. Yes, she'd definitely seen this before – if she wasn't mistaken, it had been during that time when a mad scientist-turned-circus magician had tried to resurrect a Groudon, and had ended up with a disgusting villainous mockery of the god. May shuddered when she reflexively recalled her time inside the thing after it had swallowed her whole, and looked closer at the platform before that train of thought got too nightmarish.

It was on a whole larger and greater than the previous machine had been, clearly sporting an interior area this time, and a few walkways and gantries ringed the hull, which looked to be suspended this time by a trio of thick tressed columns. Magma grunts were visible patrolling the structure. Curiously, it lacked the trio of spikes which she remembered; in lieu, a pair of conduits snaked out from a side of the machine, feeding two smaller platforms which_ did_ have the spikes. She frowned. So they were trying to bring up two Groudon now? Was that it? She idly wondered if Butler still had that fossil of theirs to do it. She didn't know jack about the science behind it all-

Something metaphorically clicked inside her head. Something to do with the word fossil…

She blinked, the colour ever-so-slowly draining from her face. "Brendan, what was the thing they stole from the museum again?"

He looked at her, slightly concerned. "Some fossil. Why?"

"What kind of fossil? Of what species?"

The Murkrow's foot deepened around Brendan's head. "A… Kyogre fossil, I think."

She blanched. "Shit…"

"What is it?"

She stared at him, wide-eyed. "You know that incident with the dark Groudon I told you about once? The guy behind it was using a fossil to get the DNA he needed, and he's still got that one. There's a machine down there that looks like it's supposed to do the exact same thing as the one he used, but with two sets of spikes. And then I remembered that somebody had stolen the fossil…" She let the rest remain unsaid.

"Ah." Brendan shut his eyes. "So we've got a cult of ground-pounding fanatics just itching to get their hands on a pair of super powerful Pokemon that could bring about the end of the world, we're miles away from any law enforcement and we're likely the only people for miles around who know about it. Great."

May almost smiled. "Actually, I'm pretty used to the idea of saving the world, some town, ecetera ectera. You've no idea how often I got roped into it when I traveled with Ash."

"Double ah." He glanced down at the complex again, appearing to muse something over. "So clearly you know what the first heroic thing we do here is, right?"

"Not a clue," she admitted. "I'd probably go and blow some stuff up, though. That usually puts a spanner in the works somehow."

"When in doubt, blow something up," Brendan murmured, beginning his short slide down the escarpment to get over to the facility. "I like the sound of that."

May couldn't help but grin as she followed along also, determined to see Magma fail in their plan for conquest.

* * *

**And hence this chapter ends. Probably not too ground-breaking in the originality department, but then this story and its plot's over two years old now. Can't change that. ^_^**

**So that's all, then. Hope to see you next week, and of course, out of courtesy, leave an alert or review or something to let me know there's still people willing to take a gander at me.  
**

**Signing off,  
grammaguy**


	6. Blowing the Hotsicle Stand

**DISCLAIMER: gagrummay deos not own Pemokon. Betch you couldn't read that, did you?  
**

**And hey all again, readers! =D**

**So, I was just writing that sentence just above this one, and I thought, why not take a page from a friend and acknowledge the reviewers in the author's notes? So, with a gratuitous gesture I'd like to thank Arceus Arcanus and JapanDreamer09 for their kind words and wisdom, as well as those other two people who generously left an alert but perhaps found themselves indisposed to leave a review. Fear not. I don't mind all that much if you settle for just an alert, actually. So long as I know there are people out there who're are ready and waiting to read what I have to offer, then I'm happy. Kinda' ironic given I always feel guilty when I lay off a review for a well-done story.**

**So, enough from me, let's get a move on. Our heroes will find themselves changed for better or worse soon enough.  
**

* * *

Orbhunt - Chapter 4

Greenlush Valley

Blowing stuff up, May discovered, was probably going to be easier said than done.

That was certainly what she figured was the case as the two of them slowly wound their way towards the machine, avoiding the increasingly numerous ground patrols as they did so. Even with her team of five (one of which was a barely combat-worthy Beldum) and the villainous team's generally poor track record with grunt inventories, she doubted she'd be able to take on over seven dozen combatants if the alarm was raised. And that wasn't counting the elite troops Magma likely had in reserve somewhere. You didn't start a project this big and then leave it to be dismantled by a couple of teenagers, she empathized with a fair share of annoyance.

Brendan seemed to have noticed her uneasiness after a few minutes of silent approach and hiding. "There a problem?"

"Yes," she said. "We're gonna' have to be able to get up there using that staircase, right? But it's really exposed so we'll be seen instantly if we go up it. In that case, what's Plan B?"

Brendan suddenly hushed, pointing ahead of them and laying down low. The two paused and ducked their heads as a grunt rounded a tree, possibly having heard some of their conversation. He glanced around suspiciously for about thirty seconds, before shrugging, turning around and continuing on with his duties.

"Plan B…" Brendan resumed, squeezing his eyes shut. "Well, this is a lot bigger than I first thought it was. We can't take on so many grunts, so going loud would be stupid, and we don't know what's worth hitting inside that building."

"Try hitting the stilts?" she suggested meekly.

"Please." Brendan rolled his eyes. "That's the first thing I thought of. Trouble is if we can't knock it down fast enough we're going to have a whole legion of guys in red jackets bearing down on us. I don't even know if we can break those things at all. They looked pretty tough."

May sighed. Perhaps they should have called the police or something…

He stared up at the treetops. "Although… hmm. Have you got any good climbing Pokémon on you? I've got my Tropius, but I doubt he could carry a two people at once."

She thought for a second. "I'm sure Blaziken could climb if he wanted to. And carry me at the same time. What are you planning?"

"We can use the tree canopy for cover. The platform isn't much higher than that, so we can just leap up from there and skip the stairs. And then do some sabotage. Shouldn't be too hard, the grunts down here don't seem to look up all that often."

Calling out their respective Pokémon, the two hurriedly checked the vicinity for any grunts that might be watching them, then May and Brendan's Blaziken and Tropius leapt and flapped up to the thick branches suspended above them. It wasn't a comfortable place to be, as the thinner branches caught on her shirt and gear, but she was determined to put aside her discomfort for the time being.

* * *

And so they advanced, as they were, concealed by the vibrant green of the leaves from earth-based prying eyes. May often spotted Magma grunts patrolling the ground below them, but they almost never looked up, and the two instances they did so they failed to notice the four clambering onwards. Now that she had the luxury of observing without having to hide herself much at the same time, May took the time to take note of the sharp alertness and watchfulness of the grunts, vastly different to the subtle hints of fear in their movements she'd previously seen during the scuffle with Team Aqua many years ago.

_Which was probably because they knew there was an insane madman bent on their destruction controlling their god's counterpart,_ she mused. _And their leader was knocked out._

Why they were so confident here was likely because, if they actually did revive a Groudon, and maybe a Kyogre too, control over the beasts would practically be guaranteed, if she assumed quite rightly that there were measures in place to do such a thing. And there would be practically nothing that could stop the two, especially if Magma made targets out of anything that might pose a significant threat, like Rayquaza. May's jaw gaped once she realised the sheer scale of what the team was attempting to do.

_And what would they do to normal people like us? _she thought. _They must know there's not going to be many people who agree with them. Just butcher us like Mareep in a slaughterhouse? Oh, Arceus-_

A sharp thorn raking across her cheek was more than enough to snap her out of her thoughts. She frowned, angry, and swatted the offending branch aside with a rough sweep of her hand before putting it to the cut. A considerable sting and something sticky greeted her hand, and she pulled it away to see a small bloodstain on her fingertips. She grunted. She could put up with that too… for a while.

The trip to the platform was uneventful for the rest of the way, but as the two Pokémon halted and let their trainers get a good look at the monster May wished it had taken longer. The grey alloy of the machine loomed several metres above the canopy. A fence ringed the outside balcony, which itself had secure doors leading to its innards. After a whispered command from their respective masters, Blaziken jumped the whole distance and landed with a _clang_ on the corrugated flooring, with the slower Tropius flying up behind them. May winced at the sharp noise. Hopefully nobody had heard that.

Brendan was careful not to make the same mistake as he disembarked and recalled Tropius, a measure which was totally wasted when he whistled while looking back down at the treetops. "Well, this is quite the bee's knees, huh? I'd give these guys an A for structural engineering, if they weren't all homicidal idiots."

"Keep your voice down," she insisted. "Somebody might hear us."

He smiled, but dropped the volume somewhat all the same. "Yeah, sorry about that. So, your call -should we split up and hit as many things as possible, or go together?"

"I'd go together," she said, without hesitation. "We don't know who or what's inside this thing, so we should play it safe."

He nodded, seeing her logic. "Point. Ladies first," he added, gesturing at the doorway with another grin gracing his countenance.

She glared at him. "Chicken. Fine." To her surprise, the door was quite hard to open, enticing a grunt of effort from her, but it swung outwards smoothly on well-oiled hinges despite its weight. A very inviting hallway made of a mass of dark black pipes of varying sizes and diameters and a steel floor lay behind it. Calling Blaziken forward to light up the passage ahead, the trio advanced, constantly wary for any sign of a hostile presence.

The group stopped at a fairly large circular room, which was mostly filled with whirring machinery and – to May's curiousity – a cluster of pulsing blue and red glass tubing which ran the height of the room. It occurred to her that the beams were probably what contained… whatever it was that would create the elemental duo, and hastily poked Brendan in the side to get his attention.

"There." She indicated the cluster. "We can crack that first."

"What is it?"

She fidgeted. "The beam Butler used to carve that Groudon into the ground looked a lot like those do," she explained. "One of them's blue, though, so that's gotta' be Kyogre's stuff in there. We can kill two birds with one st-"

"I don't appreciate Maxie's constant ranting about this 'new age' of his. It just gets on my nerves."

May's face went white. Someone was coming! Looking over at Brendan, she noticed him scrambling (quietly) to find a hiding spot. Turning to Blaziken, who was looking at her helplessly, she recalled him, and managed to find a hiding spot under a spinning pair of steel spheres just before the intruders entered the room and stopped before the pipe cluster.

"Ah, here we are," she heard one of them announce. A male voice, almost certainly Butler's. She rolled her eyes. She wouldn't be letting him get away with a clean slate this time.

Shifting around, she just managed to find a tiny gap in the pipes large she could look through with one eye. She could see two people standing there illuminated by the glow from the energy beams. One, of course, was Butler, still looking as pristine and dignified as ever even with his odd purple hair and casual clothes. The other was dressed in Magma uniform, but the slight flare of the hips and posture told her that she was a female. The hood of her uniform concealed her face.

"Well, what am I looking at?" The Magma's voice was a sharp feminine one, confirming May's suspicions.

"It's only really a conduit for the DNA tracer beam," Butler admitted, "so it's not anything critical, but it's probably the nicest-looking part of this machine, anyway. Hence, we're here."

"It sounds critical to me. Looks rather vulnerable, too. Why glass?"

"Oh no, this isn't just glass. You can't protect it with something that fragile. This is a special variant of bulletproof glass I made. You could let loose a Blast Burn in here and the only thing that'd be left standing out of all this would be this pipe node."

The Magma then chose to turn around and look around the rest of the room, giving May a clear view of her face. To her annoyance, for whatever reason, the woman was wearing a pair of shades, obscuring her eyes, but she could see a few strands of dark black hair escaping the hood she was in, framing a pale oval of a face.

"And 'all this' is?" the woman asked, talking about the rest of the machinery in the room.

Butler looked up from a small console on one of the machines he was poring over. "Just some ventilators and the drivers for the supply lift. _Actual_ non-critical stuff."

"Ah." Butler resumed his work on the console, and the woman appeared to be about to leave when she suddenly halted and reached a hand upwards to her ear, frowning. Presumably there was a microphone mounted there somewhere, for she began to speak in a dry tone a moment later.

"Rubaia. Go ahead." May couldn't catch anything of what was said, but whatever it was, it seemed to be serious, as the woman put on an alarmed look as the speaker continued talking. "Where?Near Route 117?" More talk. The Magma's expression darkened. "… I see. Track that trail. And do it fast. We're going to be firing in only a few minutes. _Nothing_ must go wrong, do you understand me?" She let go of her ear and returned her hand to her side.

"There a problem, Scythe?" Butler quipped.

'Scythe' gave him an aside glance. "One of our patrols found a member of the sixteenth recon unconscious at the top of the bank, and there are signs on the slope that somebody's entered the valley. We have an intruder in our midst."

May just barely managed to stop herself from squeaking in fear, instead continuing to watch as her body went cold. Butler looked worried. "What are you going to do?"

A sigh."Nothing, for now. The team's following the trail they left behind, so I'll have to trust them with it. They could be still out there somewhere, but it looks like the incident happened a while ago. They're likely already in here."

"But we would've seen them coming up the stairs, surely."

She looked at him, unimpressed. "If I were trying to get in here, I would've hid in the canopy and jumped up, since the platform is ridiculously low-lying and the stairs are exposed and blatantly monitored. But I'm also low-lying on the information food chain, as you well know. I'm pretty sure if it's a need to know basis, then I need to know, you know?"

He held up his hands. "Blame Maxie. I'm not officially part of Magma, so I was forbidden to tell you anything."

"Whatever." Scythe stalked for the door. "Let's move. Maxie would want us to be present for this."

"Right." Butler followed her out of the room.

The relative silence that smothered the air after their departure was ironically deafening to May, who was sure she must have been missing something sounding over the constant drone of the machines. After what must have been a full minute, she peeked out of her cover to see Brendan ever-so-slowly pulling out of his hiding spot under a generator. The two both waited for the other to say something. Neither did.

Starting up first, Brendan made a hoarse laugh. "Well, that was a little close. I can see why that guy called her Scythe, now. It's like a brush with Death herself." Not waiting for May to reply, he stood, listening carefully for any more footsteps, and trotted over to the screen Butler had left active.

Brendan stared at the screen. It was displaying a map of the structure they were in the main window, helpfully highlighting in big letters 'YOU ARE HERE' on their current location, but more worryingly, not included on the map a small digital timer in the top-right was slowly ticking down. As he watched, the number passed the three minute mark and continued to drop.

"May, get over here."

She did as she was bade, a little colour having returned to her face. The colour drained again as she watched the timer also, however. "That's… a countdown," she said slowly.

"With three minutes left on the ticker," Brendan finished. "We've got to disable this thing fast. Once the process starts it'll probably be too late. That Butler bloke said these pipes here are tough to crack, so that idea's shot down. Any others you want to share?"

May racked her brain to come up with a solution, finding one a moment later that she would later feel quite proud of. "There could be access points for the pipes carrying the energy. They'd need to keep maintenance on these things, wouldn't they? We could get at them from there."

"Yeah…" Tracing a finger on the screen and skimming over the assigned names for all the sections, he stopped at one labelled '_**Maint.[!] Access point – G**_'. "Look there's one."

May spotted something. "And there's another," she pointed out, indicating an identical room on the other side of the facility, labelled similarly except with a _**K**_ instead of a _**G**_.

"K and G. That must mean Groudon and Kyogre," Brendan deduced. "Okay then. We're definitely not gonna' have enough time to hit both if we go together, so we're gonna' have to split up. You can take Kyogre's pipe and I'll go for Groudon's. Got it?"

May nodded, steel returning to her expression. "Got it."

Brendan turned on his heel and was almost out of the room before May called him again. "Brendan?"

"Hmm?"

She blushed. "Be careful."

He smiled kindly. "Don't worry. I'm always careful." With May frowning at his tempting of the universe, he promptly turned around and continued on, smacking his head clean against a low-running pipe he hadn't noticed before. "Ow."

May sighed. "You idiot…"

* * *

_All the mooks are probably out watching the stuff being set up, _Brendan speculated, feeling midly fortunate as he walked through the behemoth at a brisk pace thanks to a noticeable lack of security. His loyal Delcatty still padded along beside him, constantly on watch for any disturbance with her sensitive hearing.

He didn't know how well May was doing, but he assumed she wasn't facing any resistance either, if his conditions proved to be true throughout the building. Still, it seemed lax, even for something which he guessed would be a heck of a big deal for Magma.

_Not just a big deal,_ he reminded himself. _This is planet-wide terraforming they're about to commit. For the worse._

Reminded of the grim situation, he doubled his pace. Just past this corner, and…

Brendan rounded the junction, and just barely managed to get back again before the Magma grunt stationed at the doorway glanced over in his direction at the shuffling. He gave the corridor a sweep of his gaze just in case, then returned to waiting at his post.

_That was a little close._

Inwardly, Brendan berated himself. It would've been silly to leave such a point unguarded, after all, especially since they'd been detected and were fully on watch for them. He shouldn't have been so surprised. Now how to disable him…

The grunt jumped in surprise as a Delcatty leapt out from the corner he'd heard noises from previously, and screeched loudly while charging a Thunder Wave attack in her maw. He threw himself to the left as his hand lunged for the radio and Pokeballs on his belt, but he didn't quite manage to accomplish either before the Thunder Wave tracked him with uncanny accuracy and struck him down. He slumped, twitching and paralyzed.

Brendan peeked out to see his Delcatty preening itself and the man convulsing on the floor. "Coco, now's hardly the time, you little thing." She mewed in response, unimpressed. He grinned and stepped out to nearly stride into the room the grunt had been guarding, but paused and gave the man an apologetic look. "Sorry about that, dude, but I think I'd prefer you than having two great big engines of destruction over our heads. Coco, keep an eye him while I do my magic, will you?" The person glared at him at best he could with one eyelid twitching. Brendan wasn't quite sure if that was out of rage or just the paralysis working its charms, but he didn't stop to find out as he finally entered the maintenance area.

The room was dominated by a thick, see-through hollow pipe half-embedded into the wall to his right. It had to be at least a foot in diameter. The rest of the place looked a little less impressive, sporting a couple of sturdy-looking control panels. Brendan considered just messing about with the multiple dials the largest one had, but after stabbing a big red button (_It's always the red ones that mess things up most, _he thought) to no apparent effect, an LCD display in the centre lit up with '**Password Required: _'.** Not exactly willing to guess and likely get it wrong and have all sorts of trouble come down on his head, Brendan considered the rest of the room. Literally nothing of value was gracing the rest of the room, aside from the pipeline, and Brendan could assume that it'd be as indestructible as the ones in the circle room back a minute ago.

… or was it? Leaning in a little closer to inspect, Brendan managed to make out a barely discernible hatch in the side of the pipe, large enough for a small person to fit through with a little effort. He smiled. Perfect!

Yanking the handle, he snorted as the door didn't budge. Looking around the edge to discover the source of his problem, he spotted a thin metal lock holding the door firmly in place just over the crest of the pipe. Now how to disable _that,_ then…

* * *

May, having had the misfortune of picking Kyogre's room, which was situated closer to the bridge of the platform, was being held up considerably by grunts who were charging around, trying to each get secure a good view of… wherever their resurrection was due to take place, as well as technicians just performing odd jobs and last-minute preparations. It infuriated her having to hide every five seconds, desperately aware of the perhaps two minutes she had left, but she reminded herself that too much was at stake here to risk blowing her cover just for her feelings.

As a stroke of impossibly good luck, May somehow managed to get within sight of the maintenance room without alerting even one grunt. It probably helped that none of them were actively patrolling, but still, that was an achievement. Casting a nervous look around the passage and seeing not even somebody to guard the room, she carefully padded over into the open.

Of course, her luck was not indomitable. Just as she was running over to the doorway to finally carry out her sabotage, a grunt and well-dressed Magma captain rounded the corner at the opposite end of the hall, chatting excitedly. Her running and their talking abruptly ceased as both parties caught sight of each other at the exact same time.

There was a horrible pause, during which May felt her blood pressure rise by a few dozen beats per minute. She tried to force her legs to resume their rush for the door, but the grunts recovered first.

"Hey, you!" the grunt roared. He released a Numel, but the order to launch an attack was stopped in his mouth after his partner blasted forward, evidently intent on snagging the girl who'd dared to trespass on their ground.

This was all the encouragement her legs needed. May yelped as she ducked a hasty flying grab from the Magma and practically tossed herself into the room as he went skidding away behind her. Hearing the first grunt yell, "Stop her, Numel!" she cast her gaze around in a panic, spotting the first thing that looked important enough: the pipeline, identical to the one Brendan had seen earlier.

She snatched her Pokeball from its belt in a rush. "Blaziken, quick! Blow that pipe open somehow!"

Her charge materialised in a flash of red light. The starter was momentarily disoriented from the haphazard way his master had summoned him, but nevertheless regained his composure a moment later and delivered a powerful Fire Punch to the glass. It didn't even so much as crack, but the hinges of the door broke on the impact and the door fell inwards, forming a neat square hole in the tube.

May briefly wondered if that would be enough to stop the machine from working, but before she could come up with a back-up plan, the second grunt and the Numel from before both appeared in the doorway outside. The former immediately rushed in and grabbed May from behind in a choke hold before she could put up a defence, but his eyes widened when he heard Blaziken snarl, and felt the furious Pokémon snatch him by the hood and bodily hurl him back out again. The Numel hurriedly charged a Flamethrower, and made to fire it, but the attack was arrested as Blaziken forced the Pokémon right out of the room in a huge full-body tackle.

* * *

Back in the conduit room, the machines remained whirring in an endless drone, and the network of pipes remained as silent as ever with all sorts of foreign material being pumped through them, but there was one thing that did change.

The small control panel the duo had been watching earlier still displayed the map as they had left it (though two blaring red dots had appeared in two of the rooms), but the timer in the corner was still ticking down, just past five seconds left. As the little Numel attempted to roast the intruder with a Flamethrower and was forcibly ejected from the room by Blaziken for his troubles, and Brendan triumphantly managed to shatter the lock at last using the disabled grunt's sturdy radio, it hit zero.

The bright energy within the conduit of pipes shifted noticeably, speeding up their travel and slowly beginning to brighten even further…

* * *

May gasped as she witnessed her beloved Pokémon and his victim of a Numel fly out of the room again. A scuffle started shortly after as Blaziken fought to keep a Ninetales the captain had summoned from flaying him alive.

Behind her, the pipe was still empty… but the air inside slowly began to rush from somewhere down the trail, being forced out by something else coming up behind it. By the time it had progressed enough that May became aware of it and turned around to regard it, puzzled, the intense glow of the energy blasting towards it reached a peak as it passed by. The energy, behaving much like a strange liquid, diverted right through the open hole in the pipe, and May was engulfed in a sea of fluorescent blue ichor.

* * *

"Haha! See, I told you that radio would work!" Brendan crowed. Outside, Delcatty huffed at his exaggerated response to the victory. The grunt, paralyzed as he was, could only manage a vaguely horrified look.

Despite the obvious stupidities of such a thing, he was curious nonetheless, so Brendan carefully stuck his head inside the pipe to have a look down the length on either side. Unsurprisingly, it made off into darkness quite a short distance away due to lack of lighting.

He 'Ahh''d appreciatively at the gentle breeze flowing through it, though. It seemed a bit excessive for just ventilation. He was honestly expecting something like what he'd seen in the circle room back a while ago…

Oh? Was that light? Frowning at the now brightening ring appearing a good while ahead, it occurred to him that that was just the shadow of his head. But that meant something must have been coming up behind him-

He practically flung himself backwards with his entire upper body in an attempt to avoid whatever it was that was approaching, suddenly embarrassingly aware of how he'd completely lost track of time, but his evasive efforts proved to be futile, as the red pulsing energy beam blasting down the tube reached the access point and swallowed the room whole in an eerie scarlet luminescence.

* * *

**And CLIFFHANGER! OH! WHAT IS THE DEAL!**

**Well, A) it's a great point to change chapters, and B) I personally felt like I'd be stuffing too much information into the chapter if I continued on. My incessant inner demand to keep the word count fairly consistent might've had a part too, lol.**

**So! That's all from me this week. Leave a review, put an alert, or tack it in the favourites list (or preferably all three!), and I will see you next week! =)**

**Signing off,  
grammaguy  
**


	7. Red Eyes, Dark Knives and Cheeky Replies

**DISCLAIMER: Eat your milk, don't do school, and drink your drugs! In other words, I don't own Pokemon.  
**

**Hello, and welcome, readers! =D**

**So here I am again, after over two weeks of nothing. I won't try to justify my absence - even if I was ill, I still could've put that time to good use and done a little typing. So my heartfelt apologies for not getting this done sooner. However, perhaps to make up for it, this chapter is way longer than all the previous chapters (over 5,500 words **_**before**_** the author's notes), so I might have some hope yet! Of course, my thanks must also go out personally to JapanDreamer09 and Yakolev for offering their comments and critique for the last chapter.**

**And just as a word of warning, this chapter's a little darker and edgier than the previous ones, even the museum chapter. I'm not sure just what kind of reaction the ending might elicit from you either, so I think I have to also send out a pre-apology just in case someone takes offense.**

**On with the show!**

* * *

Orbhunt – Chapter 5

Greenlush Valley – Magma Regen Site

"One more minute to go," Scythe murmured. The small digital timer unceremoniously set in the instrument panel almost seemed to slow in response to her words, but then that gave her time to peruse the area one more time. Butler and Maxie were arguing in the corner over why the 'Initiate Process' button had been an inconspicuous small black button instead of a big red one, as cliché dictated it be, and the technicians in the room were carefully eyeing the various dials and readings keeping watch for any anomaly, in case the computer failed to do so before them. Looking out through the tempered glass window of the bridge, she saw the vast grassy clearing a hundred metres below, soon to be where the land god would rise after they had cast him. She could make out the mix of anxious, anticipating and fanatical expressions on the faces of the few dozen grunts they had established in the forest ringing it, ready to subdue their quarry on a moment's notice if things got violent. Every so often one of the grunts milling about there would glance up at her window, and, seeing her, and knowing full well what she was expecting of them, would nod silently at her and wordlessly return to their waiting.

She checked the timer again. Forty seconds.

"Scythe!" Hearing her name called, she turned to regard a flustered-looking Butler and Maxie, who were looking at her pleadingly. Obviously, the caller had been Maxie. Butler likely wouldn't have got her name right anyway.

"You're a believer in symbolic events, right?" Butler asked. When she nodded and replied an affirmative, he continued, "But you're also a practical person at the least, right?"

She raised an eyebrow, but said, "Yes…" all the same.

Butler now pointed at Maxie in exasperation. "Okay, now can _you_ convince him that it's a lot better for the big flashy buttons to be on emergency switches and such instead of something as pedestrian as an executing button?"

She shrugged. "Well, if you're absolutely positive that you can't penetrate this place's defenses then it'd be perfectly fine to have a red button. It's just a lot more useful in general if something goes wrong to have it on an emergency switch."

The two men looked at each other. "So, we're both right?" Maxie said slowly.

"Pretty much."

Maxie blinked, but then smiled and turned to Butler with his hand out. "Well argued – you are a worthy opponent," he congratulated.

Butler made a similar expression and grasped his hand strongly. "Agreed."

Scythe stared at the exchange. _Men,_ she thought sullenly.

She tore her gaze away from the two to glance at the clock again. Twenty-five seconds? Dialga must have been drunk or something if it was this slow…

Butler recovered himself and studied her intently. "You know, for someone who's so paranoid, you're remarkably calm about all this."

"I'm not," she said flatly. "With this little time left, people get desperate. We still haven't found those intruders yet, so it's perfectly legal to worry."

He remained silent, instead opting to just watch the timer tick down. Scythe did the same, while Maxie put on his most authoritatious pose and stood at the window, glaring down at the grunts below.

Fifteen seconds.

"Say, Scylla?" Butler said.

She looked up slightly over the rim of her glasses, exposing her eyes, choosing to ignore his mistake for the moment. "Yes?"

"If someone screwed this whole plan up right now," he said carefully, "What would you do to them?"

Only pausing for a moment, she replied, "Likely get rid of them. Permanently, if possible. We can likely salvage the situation if they destroyed this facility, but we can't afford to have foolish people running around making nuisances of themselves more than once. Our goal is well-intentioned, so I see no need for people who resist it."

He did not even look remotely reassured by her words. "That's excessively harsh."

"But necessary," she countered.

Five seconds, the timer now read.

Completely catching everyone in the room off guard, the door to the control room flew open, banging heavily against the wall and sending a gust of air rolling about inside. Scythe felt an odd combination of surprise, approval at how easily the man had opened the door and ire at being interrupted all at the same time, but the grunt that'd just entered cut her off and made her blood turn to ice.

"We've found the insurgents," he rasped, voice hoarse. As he spoke, the technician monitoring the system display drew in a sharp breath. "They're already near the maintenance rooms at each end of the building. It looks like they going to sabotage it."

The technician now gasped outright, starting to stab various buttons on the panel in front of him as the LEDs scattered about started flashing in a worrisome fashion. "They've opened the maintenance gates!"

Then the timer ticked to zero.

While Maxie was struggling to both scream orders to the other grunts who were regrouping at the room, and the technicians who seemed completely at a loss about where to start recovering the situation, Butler and Scythe both turned to watch a massive flash outside the bridge as a pair of the lasers that had drawn the viral Groudon from the ground many months earlier spewed from their platforms and began to carve their respective runes into the grass. Butler's eyes bulged in horror as he noticed that the beams seemed considerably dimmer that what they ought to have been, and came to the immediate conclusion that the energy was bleeding out of the system somewhere, most likely where the gates had just been opened. Almost entirely on reflex, he leapt across the room, smashing anyone in his path out of the way, and yanked down hard on the bright red lever next to the doorway. Power was instantly cut to the entire station and the bridge plunged into darkness, the dual beams ceasing their runecrafting a moment later. The runes themselves ceased to glow a moment later.

Scythe, who had bulldozed her way out of the room already, was more concerned with dealing with the root of the problem. With not the slightest hesitation she quickly pulled off her glasses and began to race down the near pitch-black hallways, seeming remarkably unaffected by the dark, and barely slowing down until the sounds of a fierce battle and agonised howling met her ears.

Sidling round the corner to assess the situation, she was greeted with the sight of a strong-looking (albeit heavily bruised and battered) Blaziken ferociously beating the life out of a Ninetales, who'd evidently gotten a little too close for its own safety. A helpless Magma officer was standing further on, fruitlessly yelling orders in a vain attempt to save his Pokémon.

That fowl needed to be stopped.

Taking the element of surprise, she stood out into the hallway, nicked two knives from her belt and threw them in a tight spread at the Pokémon's body. Unfortunately, at that moment, the Blaziken finally decided to stop mutilating the Ninetales and lifted his head, causing the first knife to miss and the second to cut a short but deep cut in his thigh, causing him to roar in pain and intuitively release a scorching Flamethrower down the passage. Scythe had already made it halfway down and threw herself to the side, gritting her teeth at the heat that singed her exposed skin. After the fowl halted his attack and took a proper look at her in a less pain-blinded state, the Lord Assassin tossed another knife to keep him on the defensive.

The chicken didn't fall for it. Screeching a battle-cry, the starter's claw blurred and snatched the knife right out of the air, ignoring the slight cuts it gave him, and hurled it back in a shot aimed for her lower stomach. She dodged nimbly, but the Blaziken didn't wait for her to regain her senses and lunged, claws aflame with a Fire Punch. Barely spotting the attack in time, she ducked and let the enemy's huge momentum carry him forward for a while before pulling out one last knife and cleaning stabbing it into his lower thigh.

The Pokemon gasped and swung an arm out, clipping her on the side of her head and spinning her out, preventing her from pulling the blade out again. The chicken stood, outraged, and snatched her hand out of the air as he done earlier and yanked her back towards him, charging another Fire Punch. Scythe made a tiny cry of pain as something broke in her hand, but she still ducked and let the flaming fist sail over her head. Reaching back around him, she gripped her still-stuck knife and wrenched it upwards and out as hard as she could, ripping several muscles and grazing the bone there. Blaziken howled in mortal agony and leaned back to avoid a neck-slash, before feebly tossing his entire body forwards in an attempt to flatten her. She rolled sideways, avoiding being crushed, but giving Blaziken just enough time to scramble up into a standing position and limp back a few steps to catch his breath.

Scythe hurriedly did the same and scrutinised her opponent, wheezing. This one was too strong to be wild. It must have had a trainer somewhere…

Taking in a breath, she raised her combat knife again, preparing to fight, but it proved unnecessary, as Blaziken, who was weak, beaten and just incredibly tired from all the battling, dropped to his knees one last time before his eyes rolled to the back of his sockets and he crashed to the floor, out from exhaustion.

The silence that permeated the thin hallway after that was punctuated only by Scythe's laboured breathing, which slowly began to wind down after she realised that her adversary was now out for the count. When she was at last satisfied the thing was neutralised, she sighed, dropped down and sat propped against the wall.

"You," she uttered sharply, referring to the captain, who was still quite in shock from what he'd just witnessed.

He straightened. "Y-yes ma'am?" he stammered.

"I dropped my glasses somewhere back there," she said, indicating the hallway she'd come from. "Go and find them."

He paused. "I… uhhh… what do they look like, ma'am?"

She raised her head and gave him a full on glare with her now-exposed scarlet eyes, watching him freeze and shiver slightly as her unnerving ability took effect. "Just _do it_, you imbecile." She shut them and stood, letting him have his body under his control again.

As the captain wandered off into the darkness, Scythe walked over to the Blaziken's prone form, frowning at it. You most certainly did not get wild Blaziken anywhere in Hoenn, let alone one this well-trained. Her memories then came to her in a flash as she recalled what the technician had said just before the laser had fired. Steeling herself and wiping any emotion off her face, she stepped over the body and gingerly walked over to the entrance to the wrecked maintenance room. The sticky fluorescent blue liquid coating the floor in front of the door was already a bad sign. Peeking in after a moment of deliberation, the first thing to take her notice was an unconscious sixteen year-old girl, still twitching, lying flat on the floor, amongst puddles of glowing ichor.

Scythe pressed her lips tightly together in suppressed fury.

* * *

_Odd. I'm floating. And people don't usually float..._

Brendan Birch wasn't floating, per se, but because of the strange sensation his body was transmitting to him it certainly seemed like that's what it was. His vision was completely black despite having his eyes wide open, but after a moment of testing, he found he could still move his arms around somewhere in front of him.

The last thing he remembered before blacking out was a massive tsunami of red... _stuff_ jetting from the pipe, engulfing him whole, and producing an extremely uncomfortable prickling which battered his skin from all angles before a massive shock of pain tore through his head made him fall unconscious.

_Unless, of course, I am _not_ unconscious. Maybe I'm dead and I've just got to sit here till the noble Grim Reaper gets on over here and carts me off to the afterlife..._

He was pretty sure he wasn't dreaming at moment. He was still coherently forming thoughts and ideas, which you didn't get to do in dreamland. So where on Earth _was_ he...?

Brendan blinked suddenly as a curious red blur phased into existence what he guessed was a few metres away, and then fade as fast as it had come. He was tempted to dismiss it as a figment of his imagination, but then other identical blurs came and went, progressively getting faster and faster and more numerous, proving him wrong. And faster and faster they went.

Just as it reached a peak and his entire vision was just a cascade of flashes and blinks, the whole world exploded in light, a mix of reds and inky blacks with the occasional yellow and blue streak. He gasped and squeezed his eyes shut to try and block the light, but discovered to his dismay that his eyelids made out to be no barrier at all and the flashes continued.

_Well isn't this a fine acid trip!_

Throwing his arms around his head as the flashes continued on and on, he had little choice but to wait it out as they persisted for several minutes, constantly bombarding his eyesight with glorious light, but just as he thought they'd never stop, they slowly began to fade, gradually vanishing in the manner like he'd seen them enter, until everything was black again.

Sighing loudly but not hearing anything, he prepared to wait for longer until something else interesting happened, but then a final little red light came back again.

_Not again..._

It wasn't again. This particular light did not fade. It just sat there in front of him, doing nothing. Brendan considered continuing his wait, but knew better than that by now. Instead he just focused on the light, watching for any odd disturbance.

He got it fairly soon. It was barely noticeable at first, but the light slowly began to brighten, doing so faster and faster until it was impossible to miss it. It was practically a miniature sun floating in the air in front of him when at last, probably five minutes after it started, the light seemed to pulse with its own life and fired right towards him.

Brendan's eyes widened in surprise, and he just managed to move his foot slightly before the light punched into his chest, and the most heart-stopping, horrifying pain filled his mind, and he blacked out again.

"His eyes are weird as heck, though, I'll give him that. Red? Seriously?"

Brendan awoke to hear someone, a man, from the sound of it, speaking over him. Doing a quick one-over on his body, he could tell his arms and legs were still there. In fact, he couldn't feel any kind of pain he would normally associate with waking up after being shot by a ball of light. As for where he was, he also could feel cool metal pressing against his back, indicating he was lying down somewhere, and the lukewarm air implying he was indoors as well. Most likely still in that Magma base…

His body went cold when he realised the implications of that fact. Had he been captured? Was he being held hostage?

Opening his eye just a crack so his possible captors couldn't see he'd woken up, Brendan glimpsed around the room. He was lying at the back of a dim metal room lit by a single fluorescent tube on one of the walls. There were no windows he could see from his current position. The single entranceway was a door, held wide open, flanked by two Magma grunts standing outside, who were occasionally peeping back in to check on their prisoner. A grizzled-looking Slugma was slumbering in the corner – evidently guard duty had been a little too boring for it to handle.

The Magmas' presence and what they were doing confirmed his worst suspicions – he'd been captured, and he doubted they'd be all that willing to release him after what he'd apparently done. Adjusting his head slightly to glance down, he was unsurprised but still painfully disappointed to see his Pokeballs missing from their usual places on his belt.

_Hope Zuzu and the others are alright…_

It was a feeble hope, but a guy could dream, right?

His musings were luckily saved from heading into despair territory when he heard footsteps clapping their way down the hallway outside. Brendan opened his eyes again slightly to see the Magma grunts standing stiffly at attention just before a person stalked moodily into view and into the room. Slung unceremoniously over their shoulder was none other than May, who looked like she was, as he had undoubtedly been earlier, out cold.

Brendan briefly considered springing up and attacking the three of them in a heroic effort to save the both of them from torture or whatever it was he didn't dare guess was coming next, but immediately quenched the idea. The last thing he needed was to be knocked out for a third time in a row for nothing.

The person dropped May with a cringe-worthy _clank_ on the floor, grunting, and Brendan was surprised to hear that their voice belonged to a female. After dusting herself off as if she'd just been carrying some dust-covered antique, she turned to leave, filling him with mild relief.

Or rather, so it seemed that way for the first two seconds, after which the woman seemed to change her mind and glance back towards his direction, which then made him realise further that he'd seen this woman before, in the conduit room. Cocking her head curiously, she turned back again, but instead of striding out she reached over with a foot and gently nudged the Slugma with her toes. The Pokemon's eyes opened sleepily, but with a lazy glance at the woman, who was gesturing for him to leave, he slowly slithered his way out.

Desperately hoping that was all she'd intended, he nearly sagged when the woman then reached with a hand and swung the door completely shut, sealing them inside. She finally swerved round, a hard expression on her face. He now closed his eyes fully, hoping whatever was to happen next wasn't going to be _too_ crippling.

Of course, torturers never gave that sort of luxury, and the lady proved that when her arm just blurred and the next thing he knew, she was being pulling into the air with her hand clasping his shirt in a grip of iron. Brendan just couldn't keep his eyes shut after this and they snapped open, to fully see that the woman was now holding him aloft with just one arm. He was vaguely shocked at the display, and made him immediately reconsider attempting to fight back.

"You're rather poor at pretending to be asleep, you know," she noted drily. "And I have to say, you're quite wild. Coming in here, denying everyone the chance of a better world to live in and injuring some of our rank-and-file members. For children, that's pretty impressive."

She shook him a little. She'd probably intended for it to hurt, but Brendan was just beginning to consider the possibility that all his nerves had been fried in the 'dream'. He certainly wasn't feeling anything painful from being suspended in midair by his shirt. It certainly _looked_ like it ought to've…

"But there's one thing I don't know," she went on, unaware of his confusion. "Trainers are meant to be smart people – so surely you can recognise that what we're doing is for a good cause, even if the methods are a little…" She searched for the right word. "Extreme. So effectively what I'm asking is _why you did it_. So, there you go. Why _did_ you do it?"

He glared at her, not giving her the satisfaction of an answer. Seeing his determination, she looked unimpressed. "I see. So that's how it's going to be."

With a somewhat exaggerated flourish, she pulled off the shades she was wearing, and Brendan was incredibly surprised to see that they had been concealing two intense red-coloured irises, much like his own. With the gesture made, she proceeded to stare deeply into his eyes. Brendan was actually tempted to laugh at how silly she looked, despite the seriousness of the situation.

"I'll ask again," she said, tone of voice a little more hard-edged. "Why did you do it?"

"Go to hell," he retorted. He couldn't help it.

The lady blinked, looking so surprised by his response that she even reared her head back, startled. "I'm sorry, what?"

"You heard what I said."

The woman stared hard at him for a moment longer, observing his features, before scowling darkly. "Jack Bauer it is, then."

A fraction of a second later, the fist of her other hand came blasting up and connected with the side of his face with a terrible _crack_, which Brendan now actually gasped at. Okay, _that_ one he'd definitely felt. It still didn't seem as painful as it ought to have, but it at least reassured him his sense of touch wasn't completely gone.

"And there's more where that came from," she said coldly. "I can keep doing this until your face breaks or you give me that simple answer. It's your choice."

"Not with punches like that, you won't," he snarled. "Go to hell."

Her eyes twitched only once before they narrowed. "As you wish."

Cue her fist coming up again and giving him one, two, three, four, _five_ massive blows to various points on his face. The treatment was enough to have him shutting his eyes tight and gripping his face with a hand as a dull throb echoed through his face. It _still _wasn't as a painful as he'd expected it to be. He settled on the idea that his nerves had all been just numbed up a notch by the light. Yes, that must've been it.

"Reconsidering?"

He opened his eye to see her smirking. Feeling a stab of indignance and a borderline suicidal tendency, he muttered, "Sorry, sweetheart, that's a no."

He felt some minor satisfaction seeing the smirk completely vanish from her face, to be replaced by a strange mix of anger, surprise and curiosity all at the same time. The expression lasted a whole three seconds before something evidently clicked in her mind, and she smiled faintly. That didn't reassure him in the least.

"Alright then." Dropping him suddenly on his feet again, he stumbled, which gave her plenty of time to spin him around to face the unconscious May lying on the floor. "Know this girl?"

Not quite fully prepared for the question, he could only manage a lousy "Errr…" before her smile widened. Yanking him back, she threw him roughly against the opposite wall before leaning down and pulling May up in the same manner as she'd done to him, only this time multiplying the drama tenfold by reaching back and casually pulling out a long, black, nasty-looking knife. Brendan froze as she mercilessly held it in a threatening manner to his best friend's neck.

"Perhaps I'm getting a little ahead of myself," she said coolly. "Your name, her name, how you got here, what possessed you to try and take on Magma, and why you did it. Now." She gently stroked May's skin with her blade for emphasis.

Brendan sagged, conceding defeat. "Okay, okay… I'm Brendan, she's May. We-"

"Surnames?" she interrupted.

"… Birch and Maple," he added.

She stared at him, and then laughed outright. "Brendan Birch and May Maple. Now that's a good one." She halted her tirade. "I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for the moment. Continue."

Brendan opened his mouth to reply, but both their attentions snapped to the doorway as a loud bang emanated from it, followed by a muffled cry of pain. The woman sighed in exasperation. "For Arceus' sake, push it harder!" she exclaimed. "And stop appearing just at the wrong moment!"

The door was shoved open fully now with a little more force than needed, and two people walked in, being an amused Maxie grinning at the sight of a strange purple-haired man clutching his nose in an effort to stop the pain.

"Can you _ever_ open a door properly?" The lady had evidently seen this kind of stuff a lot.

He gave her a smouldering glare, and began to cook up a retort for the insult, but the reply was choked to death in his throat once he spotted the girl lying in the torturer's arms. "Wha- what? May?"

He rushed forward, completely forgetting his nose, and leaned down to inspect her close up, while the surprised woman let her drop and backed away a step or two. "Of all people it had to be _you…_"

Maxie stared at her for a moment before recognition dawned on his face as well. "You know this girl too, Butler?" he asked, just as surprised as the woman, though not for the same reason, it seemed.

He looked up at the Magma leader. "Yes… she was one of the people who saved me from the Viral Groudon that I was talking about. You have to believe me." Apparently noticing Brendan standing awkwardly at the far wall for the first time, he added, "Though I'm not familiar with her friend here…"

"Brendan, sir," he said. Perhaps Lady Fortune was smiling on him today. It looked like he had an ally in this guy.

Maxie coughed. "It seems this annoying girl has come back to meddle with us again. How troublesome. Regardless of your relationship with her, it still stands that these two derailed our attempt to synthesize a Groudon, and ruined some extremely expensive equipment in the process. We cannot release them."

"And I can't accept that." Butler's voice had softened. "I won't let someone who saved my life die for just doing something that's not even that damaging. You can understand that she'd want to do this based on her previous experiences with the machine."

"Irrelevant," the woman said flatly, to Butler's shock. "You knew perfectly well what we would do to idiots like this before you joined. And join you still did."

"That was _before_ I knew someone I owe my life to would be playing the part of the idiot," he protested angrily. Brendan considered interjecting to remind everyone present that he was still standing there and that he didn't consider himself an idiot, but decided against it, for obvious reasons.

"As I have already mentioned," Maxie said carefully, "Your feelings play no part in this."

Butler straightened, expression hardening. "Very well. Kill them and you will lose my support in this project."

"There is no need for this banter, Mr. Butler," Maxie said condescendingly. "They are going to die whether you want them to or not, and Scythe can guarantee it, so make things easier for yourself and stay on the winning side instead or throwing this opportunity away for some child."

He faltered, clearly torn between saving himself the unnecessary discomfort and punishing himself for ever getting the two involved. He then sagged, leading Brendan to initially believe he'd gone for the former, but then he sighed. "I'm sorry," was all Butler said. Brendan wasn't quite sure if it was aimed for Magma or the two kids, but Maxie seemed to get the message.

The Magma leader crossed his arms. "Scythe, if you'll please…"

Without waiting for another command, Scythe promptly knocked over the unfortunate scientist with a strong shove to his back. While he tried to regain his footing, the two Magma grunts from earlier jumped in and arrested his recovery by grabbing his arms. Ignoring his struggling, Maxie sighed. "A shame. Perhaps you might change your mind in the future, but I doubt it. Take him to a secure room somewhere. He'll be alive to see the consequences of his actions later."

The two Magma grunts and their newest prisoner left the room. Maxie began to leave also, but cast an aside glance over his shoulder at Scythe, still expectantly waiting for the go ahead signal. "Have fun. Just make sure you get rid of the bodies somehow," he said casually, before leaving and shutting the door behind him.

It all happened so fast. Scythe unhurriedly twirled the knife into her other hand before moving to stand over May.

Brendan's eyes widened in horror. "W-wait, wait a minute-!"

Too late. With the experience of someone well versed in stabbing, Scythe pierced her knife ferociously into May's abdomen, just underneath the ribcage.

May's eyelids exploded open as she was forcibly dragged out of her sleep as a horrid feral agony sliced its way through her stomach. That was before Scythe angled her knife upwards, slitting a hole in her heart.

She stared in fear at her killer, who just gave her an impassive stare back at her, sapphire orbs meeting red, before blackness claimed her vision.

Brendan couldn't speak, and was reduced to just fearfully staring at his old friend, and the blank thousand-yard stare she was now giving. Scythe ripped her knife out, flicked it to remove most of the blood, and then turned to Brendan, smiling coolly.

She advanced. Brendan swallowed and started to back away. "Look, we can talk about this… please…"

Her smile widened. "Regretting mocking me earlier now, hmm?"

Despite everything, despite the literally lethal situation he was in, despite the insane sadistic murdering woman walking towards him with a dagger in hand, he just couldn't help but crack a weak grin at her question. "Probably not, sweetheart."

She frowned. "I guess I should have expected that. Still, you're pretty good. Nobody's so far been able to resist my ability as completely as you have. Must be the eyes, huh?"

Seeing a glimmer of hope, he chuckled. "Yeah, rare as we are-"

Stab.

Brendan gasped and sucked in a breath as Scythe's knife punctured the skin below his ribcage, as she'd done to May. He managed through the pain to force his head to look down at the handle jutting from his stomach and the hand that was controlling it, and weakly grasped and pulled it, trying to rip it out. Unsurprisingly, Scythe simply angled her knife upwards and to the right again, nailing his heart.

Brendan released the breath he was holding as his body sagged, but his arms remained stuck to the knife handle. Scythe remained smiling as she pulled her knife out, but it faded when it did not come free as Brendan's hands put up a little more resistance than it ought to've. She pulled a little harder, and then the knife came out, Brendan's body crashing to the floor a moment later.

* * *

**Somehow I feel like you guys are tempted to literally put me in a cliffhanger situation after I pulled one right after another just came and went. I'm reeeally hoping I won't have to do it several times over the course of this story. They certainly aren't liked all too much, it seems.**

**I don't wanna end up just falling into another pitfall and not updating for years at a time, either, so I'll definitely try and force myself to get back on schedule. I'm itching to get the story away from the cliffie, so don't expect it to take anywhere near two weeks to do.**

**And a yup yup yup! That's it from me, then. Leave a review, alert, or favourite (though I find it weird that one would favourite and not leave an alert .), and above all stay tuned!**

**Signing off,  
grammaguy**


	8. Let's Try Not Dying First

**DISCLAIMER: Shh... hear that? It's the sound of me not owning Pokemon!  
**

**Uhh... hi guys! I said it wouldn't take two weeks to do, right? So here it is in a week and six days! Haha! =D**

**Joking/excuses (whichever floats your boat) aside, my everlasting thanks to Yakolev, Arceus Arcanus and Japandreamer09 for taking the time to review and comment. Not too much actiony stuff happens in this chapter - I probably burned myself out in the previous one - so time to wind down from the madness of Magma for a short while. We'll get back to what's going on over there next chapter.**

**Lights, camera, ACTION!  
**

* * *

Orbhunt – Chapter 6

Seagate Bay – Southernmost beach, bordering Greenlush Valley Reserve

Surrounded with the gentle rustling and crackling noises typical of the waves breaking over the shore, and the beautiful rays of sunset, a single Linoone stood atop a rock, embedded in the grass close to the sand line, still as a statue and with all the unreadable expressions of one. His sharp ears and mind were resolutely focused on one simple task – watch for incoming danger, mainly in the form of wild Mightyena and the occasional Zangoose, who might've seen fit to raid their nest for a meal. Not a single sound escaped his notice and subsequent filing away in a small meticulous part of his brain dedicated to snuffing out any predator that dared try and catch him unawares.

He had been doing this for nearly four hours now. Soon, another Linoone of the watch would come and relieve him, leaving him free to go out and forage for nuts and berries that the pack needed. Not to mention that he himself was feeling a little peckish as well...

His ear twitched. That urge could wait.

He remained silent for another ten or so seconds. Then his ear twitched again. This time, he swerved his head around to intensely study the treeline from where he'd heard the sound. There it was again! And it was getting closer...

He decided not to take his chances and bolted for the nearest bush, snagging a tree trunk to stop himself. The only thing that stopped him from racing all the way back to the nest was the fact that this sound certainly wasn't a Mightyena or any predator he'd seen. The footfalls were too heavy and slow.

Peeking out of the bush and getting a good view of the beach, he bore witness to the sight of a bipedal figure leaping out of the woods – a _human, _after taking a moment to consult his limited memory of the species – and landing on the gravel, panting. It was then that the Linoone noted it seemed to be carrying two other humans in its arms. Both were slumped in a limp position, which indicated they had died somehow. He hoped that the live human wouldn't dump the bodies here – it would attract all sorts of scavengers that might serve to make a nuisance of themselves with their proximity to the nest.

Luckily for him, the human had no such plans. Dropping one of the bodies on the ground, the human held the other by the feet and began to swing it in a circle. She sped up faster and faster until the patch of fur on the dead human's head was flying out in a mess from the centrifugal force and a piece of cloth fastened there came loose and landed a few metres away, before letting go with a large grunt. The human flew out a huge distance compared to what he'd known capable with usual human physical ability, splashing down in the sea a good distance away and sinking like a rock. The live human then did the same to the one still at its feet, before bounding away into the woods again, leaving the Linoone completely puzzled as to what the action was supposed to mean.

* * *

May wasn't quite sure when she so suddenly became self-aware again, after seeing nothing but inky blackness and hearing the unpleasant imaginary noises of a nightmare for who knew how long. But when she did, it occurred to her that she was likely, in fact, not dead. She could feel her arms and legs floating gently in what was definitely water. So she'd been thrown into the sea? What for?

A grim thought occurred to her. She'd been stabbed by that unknown woman, she remembered now – perhaps they were trying to drown her? She was honestly surprised she'd survived being stabbed in the gut alone. Was she sure she wasn't dead?

Feeling normally throughout her body, yes, intelligible thought, yes, a beating heart (Odd. She shouldn't normally have been able to hear that), yes, an incredible burning sensation in the lungs...

…burning? In the lungs?

As if just waiting impatiently for her to realise her predicament, the pain of not breathing tore her rudely out of the half-dream state she was in and jerked her into reality again. May just barely avoided a reflexive choke on the water she was in, flailing her arms and trying to gauge her direction. After quickly ascertaining her sense of up, she kicked madly at the surface above and was just beginning to see ominous black spots at the edge of her vision before she broke it. After attempting to breathe, she soon found that her lungs were full of water. Moaning, she reflexively threw up, expelling most of the liquid that was clogging her airways, and finally managed to gasp and draw in a huge breath of the sweet, sweet air that she had once taken for granted.

She managed to get her breathing under control and looked around. She was at a rather unassuming shoreline, with trees fringing the gravel and sand beach in front of her. Deciding to swim over and orient later rather than get eaten by Sharpedo, May did so.

She landed on the beach ten seconds later with a crack of stones being dislodged under her body, suddenly inexplicably tired. Twisting over to lean on her elbows, she blinked back out at the sea. She could just make out the faint outline of mountains in the distance. She was probably in that uncommonly-spoken-of bay southwest of Mauville, she deduced. Assuming she'd been out for less than a day, that was probably the most reasonable location to dispose of someone discreetly. She sighed and lay on her back, thinking. So, how had she got here? First she'd been stabbed...

Her body going slightly cold, she looked down at her torso. Afraid and yet curious at what she might see, she reached up and firmly pushed her breasts out of the way to get a glimpse at what she feared would be a huge gaping wound in her stomach.

To her utter surprise and astonishment, there wasn't any wound to speak of. There wasn't even a scar. A conspicuous hole in her shirt told her that _something_ must have gone through it – but then where on earth was the wound? She felt around the (un)affected area with a hand. It was as if the skin had never so much as been touched! But there was no way you could dream of something as real as that...

She just stared dumbly at the hole, trying and failing to come up with a justification for it, before dropping her hands to her side, putting on a confused face and slowly deciding to forget the issue for the moment. She thought of her next course of action. She'd without a doubt have to go and find help – and maybe try and find Brendan too, if she was lucky. She didn't have a clue which direction to go, for that matter, but there had to be some trainer nearby who'd be willing to help her.

She was just starting to get up onto her knees when she heard a sudden voice call out, "Hazal!"

At this random event, she nearly broke out into an outright laugh. The voice was hilariously high-pitched – it didn't sound all that human. Grinning, she glanced about to see who'd called. True to her expectations, a Linoone fired out of the undergrowth to a skidding halt on the stones. It then turned to regard her with an unreadable expression on its face, which May returned in kind. Deciding to ignore the human for the time being, seemingly, it swivelled its head, and, with her in full view of its mouth, yelled, "Hazal! It is Kiral! I've come to take your station for the day!"

Her jaw didn't drop. Rather, she elected to continue watching and see if what she was hearing was correct and not just her brain going weird from oxygen loss. Another Linoone, at the call, jumped abruptly out of the bushes to land dashingly on another rock close by. He stood on his hind legs and greeted his friend. "Apologies, Kiral. I just heard some noises coming from the sea and thought it could be a Dewgong trying to sneak up upon me."

His partner waved a paw dismissively. "It's just a human. Nothing to worry about."

"Never thought they were ones for swimming, myself..." the Linoone mused as he took the time to look her up and down. He cocked his head. "Unusual."

"What is it?" Thinking it was something with her, the other one looked at her curiously. She looked back.

"I am positive that I saw this same human dead a while ago and being thrown into the great blue," the second said. His voice clearly betrayed puzzlement. "Yes, it is definitely the same one."

This time her jaw did drop. "I was dead?" May squeaked, before she could stop herself. So she_ had _been dead or near-dead after all...

He blinked. "Excellent guess," he complimented, blatantly unaware that she really had just understood him. "A shame you can't do it with such accuracy all the time. It would make relations so much easier."

"No, I can understand what you're saying, I'm sure," she replied. "Don't worry, I'm about as weirded out as you are. In fact, probably more, since you've just met me."

He then scowled, a remarkably human-like expression. "Again, a good guess. Then I suppose you're one of those annoying tourists who think just by going 'cheepcheep' they can speak like us, though you're making a valiant attempt. In that case, please put away your annoying black boxes which make a very distracting flash of light-"

"I'm not a tourist," she said irritably. "I've just had an attempt on my life made and now I find I can talk to Pokemon. You'll understand I'm somewhat frazzled."

The two creatures glanced at each other before looking at her and the second spoke again. "You must have made some poor choice of actions in the face of a powerful human somewhere. I take it your friend did not make it, seeing as he has not surfaced yet?"

She blinked, but then her blood went ice cold. "F-friend? There was someone else?"

"Three, actually!" he boasted. "One of them tossed you and your mate into the sea, presumably to drown. Humans are such a barbaric species sometimes. What purpose is there in killing someone who you have no need to kill? It's so wasteful. I think even – eh?"

May had already flown back into the water, desperately hoping her childhood friend had not yet kicked the bucket.

* * *

Kiral gave a bemused look at Hazal. "Are all humans like this?" the younger sentry asked.

The elder sniffed. "It looks as if she's trying to save her friend, though I doubt any human could survive for so long underwater. I almost pity her."

Kiral stared back at the spot where she'd dived underneath the surface, cocking his head. "Humans are very strange beings, despite their intelligence," he remarked.

* * *

_Please be alive!_

These thoughts swirled around May as she fiercely pushed her way through the dim water, scanning the bed around her for Brendan's figure. She noted with a degree of creepy familiarity that either the water seemed a lot clearer, or her eyesight had greatly improved in the murky conditions, as despite the dissolved sediment she could see for several metres underwater.

Her eyes widened as she finally spotted Brendan hovering just above a clump of seaweeds, looking dangerously pale. What actually got her alarmed, however, was the presence of a lone pleased-looking Carvahna milling about above him. As she watched, the fish greedily opened its mouth and snapped his jaws shut tight over his arm.

"_GET AWAY FROM HIM!"_ she screamed hysterically. Ad she been paying attention, she would have noticed that her voice sounded very clear for being spoken in water, only vaguely muffled. The Carvahna, in the midst of trying to chew, looked up and let go when it saw the furious human charging towards him like a torpedo. May's poorly aimed strike went wide by a huge margin, but that wasn't her last attempt, throwing her arm out to try and smack the fish as she passed.

That went wide too, of course, but something odd happened. The Carvahna recoiled and practically blasted away like a speedboat as her arm swung by, as if the water had been shoved so hard the force had carried over to him. Too preoccupied with saving her friend, May ignored the new development again, choosing instead to grab Brendan by the waist. Kicking off from the bed, she fired the duo towards the surface.

Only after breaking the surface for the second time in five minutes did May start to calm down, but she remained alert. She quickly paddled towards the shore, reached it in seven seconds and deposited him on the gravel beach. Knowing that that wasn't to be the end of it, she lay him with his back against the floor and put her index and middle fingers against his neck. To her immense relief a weak, slow pulse confirmed that his heart was still working, if barely. She didn't know exactly how long it took to drown, but she was surprised to see he'd lasted that long.

Kneeling over his prone body, May firmly clenched Brendan's nose shut with a hand and placed her mouth over his. Completely forgetting her awkward position, she started giving the necessary rescue breaths, attempting to force the air he desperately needed into his lungs.

She went on like this for about twenty seconds or so, giving him two breaths before stopping to breathe in herself. After giving one final helping of air, Brendan's body jerked abruptly. Lifting herself away, she watched him unconsciously curl his body and spasm before, at last, his chest heaved and he promptly threw up the remaining water trapped in his lungs onto the ground beside him. After clearing those two vital organs of the fluid blocking it, he hiccupped, before taking in and letting out several large breaths.

May paused and waited, watching his chest rise and fall, and only when she accepted that Brendan's breathing had returned to normal levels did she finally sigh in relief and satisfaction, taking note of how intensely tired she was in the process. Now all she had to do was see that he recovered fully.

"So what was that meant to be?" The younger of the duo of Linoonewho'd been waiting patiently on the nearest rock chose to pipe up at that moment, startling her.

She looked at him tiredly. "Resuscitation." He blinked, utterly bamboozled. "I was saving him from drowning," she clarified.

"Ah," he said, not sounding convinced.

She didn't bother to argue, deciding to go to sleep at that moment. She reached up to untie her bandanna… but it wasn't there. A little miffed despite her condition, she glanced over at the two. "Say, when you watched the other human toss me into the sea, did anything fall off my head?"

The elder Linoone cocked his head and looked about. "Yes, actually…" Gathering the memory he needed, he scampered off down the beach, coming back a few moments later with a red cloth in his jaws, which he dropped at her feet. "Was it this?"

She picked it up, studying it, affectionately clasping the material. "Yes, this is it. Thank you very much." The Linoone huffed and raced off to go speak with his friend again in hushed tones. Sagging down into a lying position, she took the last moment of wakefulness to gently roll on her side next to her friend, sharing their warmth. Snuggling close and turning over again to observe his face, she giggled once she saw the peaceful expression he was wearing.

_He's just so super cute,_ she thought to herself, blushing, before dreamland finally took her in its caring embrace and plunged her into a welcome, deep sleep.

* * *

"No, he's alive, all right. See his belly? It's rising and falling, like he's breathing!"

"I still cannot comprehend how a human survived for more time underwater than an animal several times his size could."

Brendan's first instinct was to chuckle at the comically high pitch of the voice, before thinking better of it and going back into the enormous mountain-sized plate of salad he was tucking into. Seconds later he did anyway, his laughter reaching the horizon and causing the congregation of Pokemon and quirky creatures around him to laugh as well.

"Oh, he made a noise! And his face moved! He_ must_ be alive!"

"Why do humans make that silly exhalation, anyway? It sounds like he's having a blockage in his throat."

Brendan frowned, ceasing his laughter. These voices were mocking him! And they wouldn't go away, either.

"… well, poke him then, you nuthead. See if he's awake."

"What? Why do I have to poke him?"

"Because if you do not, I will tell the harvest supervisor how exactly our precise count of eighty-five Oran berries suddenly dropped to eighty-three in one night."

"I keep telling you, Joval did it…"

"Just poke him already! What do they teach you hatchlings these seasons?"

"Alright, alright…"

Brendan swivelled round in his office chair to try and catch the person who was intending to poke him. To his surprise, none of the audience was making a move to do so, just staring at him expectantly. His frown deepened, and then he suddenly became aware of a sharp invisible object poking him in the ribs.

Brendan opened his eyes.

Blinking fiercely in the bright light of the morning to remove the blurs associated with waking up, he frownedas the large blur filling his view came into detail.

"Ah, see? I told you that would work!"

Standing on his body was the inquisitive furry face of a Linoone, staring curiously at him. He tried to move an arm to tell it to shoo, but suddenly found that his body was, for some reason, horribly weak, and he failed to even lift the appendage off the rocks. He managed to turn his head at least, to see the expanse of a sea stretching off to his left. That explained the weird washing noise that he'd heard in his dream…

_I feel like shit,_ he thought to himself, testing out his legs and feet as he did so. They proved as unresponsive as his arms had, to his disappointment.

"According to your friend, you nearly drowned," the Linoone said airily, which caused Brendan to do a comical double-take in disbelief. It noticed his confusion. "Well, whaddaya know."

"Looks like he can understand us too," another voice said. Turning his head over to the other side, he first saw a slightly older Linoone regarding the two, and then a sleeping May, lying next to him, her eyes shut.

"That was the friend who rescued you," the second Pokemon explained, reading his mind. "I believe you owe her your life, now. What a lovely prospect that must be."

Refusing to remain clueless any longer, he croaked, "You can talk?"

"Wrongo!" the first Linoone crowed, holding a claw up. "_You_ can understand _us._"

"Auuuaaaaggh," he moaned. His whole world was falling apart around him. "Tell you what, let's put that aside for a moment. Do you know what happened to me while I was sleeping?"

The second perked up, and scurried over to his position, loftily shoving his partner over to one side as he stood on his chest. "I do," he said, in a far more serious tone. "I was doing my duty aswatchmon out at the beachfront here, when I heard something coming. It turned out to be a human, carrying both you and your friend here in its arms. It then threw you in the sea to die. Were it not for the fact that she woke up after a while and pulled you free of the water, and applied something called 'resuscitation' to clear your lungs, you would probably be nothing more than a corpse amongst the seaweed, ripe for the Carvahna to devour."

The bluntness of the tale astonished Brendan. So Magma had likely tried to rid themselves of the evidence of the murder after they'd stabbed him. He glanced guiltily over at May, who had risked her wellbeing to go back and rescue him. A funny thought crossed his mind when he realised what resuscitation meant she had to have done to him, and chuckled weakly. Excellent blackmail material right there, he amended.

Letting his head fall back, he considered his predicament. There was little he could do now with his body so crippled as it was. "So, what now?" he asked the Linoone resignedly.

The one of his chest shrugged. "Presumably deal with that hole in your ribs. I wouldn't want to have that around if it gets infected. You'd possibly die."

_I'm still wounded? I ain't wasting all of May's efforts just to be taken down by a bunch of pint-sized microscopic organisms,_ he thought determinedly. Trying and failing to lift his head enough to glimpse the injury, he instead asked the Pokémon again, "Can you do or get me anything that could heal it?"

The two exchanged looks of helplessness, which made him sag. "No, sorry," the younger one said mareepishly. "We could get you an Oran berry if you want to _try_ and heal it, but that's it."

Brendan sighed. "Most berries don't work like that on humans, you realise."

"Take it or leave it," he replied.

"Yes," he said tiredly. "Worth a shot, I suppose."

The young one nodded. "I'll be right back," he promised, before bracing his hind legs and blasting away with immense speed that only a Linoone could muster. The little ferret's footsteps could be heard crushing grass and stones as he went away.

The other Pokémon on his chest grunted and curled up into a little ball to wait, and shut his eyes. "Consider yourself lucky, human – were this not morning when not everyone is awake, he wouldn't be able to grab an Oran berry so easily. They grow fast, but the newborns love to practically inhale them as soon as they can. So they disappear fast, too."

"I thought you had a store of them," he mumbled.

"We do," he said amusedly. "It's for the cold seasons, however, where berries don't grow nearly as well. So we're not allowed to draw from it except in dire circumstances. I caught Kiral trying to smuggle some anyway a few seasons ago – he's been my unwilling servant ever since." He let out a short bark, presumably the equivalent of laughter.

"Ah," he said quietly. "I never caught your name, by the way."

"Hazal," he introduced. "You wouldn't understand where it originated from, so I won't bother trying to explain. And yours?"

"Brendan," said Brendan. "And my friend there is May."

"You chose a good person for a mate, human," he commented.

The innocent statement caught him off-guard. "I - what?" he spluttered.

He opened a lazy eye at him. "You are a monogamous species, correct? So she would be your only partner."

"She is not my girlfriend," he said, with a measured degree of embarrassment.

He rolled that eye and shut it. "You pass up an excellent opportunity, you know."

"It's not that I don't _like_ her," he corrected himself, the absurdity of admitting these things to a total stranger of a Pokémon passing him by completely. "We humans are just more selective in our, uh, choosing."

"Ah, fascinating," Hazal said, interested. "What drives that urge?"

He tried to shrug and was reminded by his body's lack of response that he could not. "I dunno. Just conditioned responses, maybe?"

"What?"

"Never mind."

The two sat in amiable silence for the next five minutes. Brendan became aware over that period of time that his chest was slowly starting to ache, and a tight pain started to surface. He hoped that it wouldn't turn into full-fledged agony as more feeling returned, or else he'd probably not be getting back up any time soon.

A huge sudden yawn from May drew both of their attentions to her. Stifling another yawn, the sixteen-year old drew herself up from sleep and stretched her arms and back, loosening them up (and also giving Brendan a shameless look at her hips), before she turned around and spotted him staring back at her, the boy smiling ruefully.

"So, you're awake," she said, returning a smile that looked rather forced.

He nodded. "I suppose that's thanks to you?"

Her smile now became far more genuine. "Y-yes."

"Thank you, May," he said sincerely.

She giggled madly. "Aww, you don't have to." She then spotted Hazal lying on top of Brendan and raised her eyebrows. "You again? I thought you left last night."

"It's Hazal_,_" he corrected. "And it was only me who left. Kiral was on watch duty for the rest of the night, and I just decided to come and check up on you when morning came."

"Aww!" Squealing like a fangirl, she snatched him up and hugged him (though not so hard as to suffocate him). "Thank you too!"

"You're welcome?" he grunted, assuming the awkward position he was holding her in was a show of gratitude. "You can put me down, now. I might lose the blackmail I've got on Kiral if he sees me like this."

"Oh, sorry!" She plopped him down on the ground again and looked around. "So, where is Kiral, anyway?"

"He's gone to get your friend an Oran berry," he said, extending a tongue to smooth down his ruffled fur. "For that injury in his chest," he added.

Her face fell as she leaned over and stared fearfully at the hole in his ribs. Brendan cursed his weakness – he wanted to see the thing himself already...

"Does it hurt?" she asked.

Surprised by the question, he frowned. "It's starting to hurt a bit, but I can't move anyway. My body just feels like crap, if you see what I mean."

"Well, you nearly _drowned_…" She caught herself. "Yeah. Nothing I know can heal something like that." She looked down, then bit her lip, worried. "And my Pokémon are all gone too. Magma must have stolen them, the stupid, evil bunch of-" She couldn't finish, at a loss for words, and resigned to just staring at the spot on her belt where her Pokémon used to reside.

Brendan sympathised with her and came to the conclusion that his own Pokémon had almost certainly been confiscated too. He felt a pang of fear when he wondered what the fanatical team intended to do with his friends. Convert them? He hurriedly stopped himself from going any further and focused on his surroundings resolutely. He needed a clear head to get through this. He was still wounded, for Arceus' sake!

Hearing some unusual, fast thumping, he concentrated. "Hey, do you hear that?" he asked.

May looked up, eyes faintly red from crying, while Hazal raised his head and shifted his ears about, trying to hear it as well.

The girl frowned and looked back at the forest. "Yeah, it's probably Kiral coming back."

"I can't hear anything," Hazal confessed.

The subject came to a halt as the aforementioned young Linoone bounded out of the bushes again and landed to a skidding halt on the gravel. In his maw he was clutching a large, juicy and perfectly ripe blue berry. Brendan's mouth started to water at the sight. He hadn't realised how hungry he was, yet…

The new arrival trotted obediently over to May and dropped the berry into her outstretched hand. "One fresh Oran berry, at your service," he announced. He licked his lips. "And be grateful. A berry that size is rarer than seeing the Temple of the Sea itself. I was tempted to eat that thing, but thought better of it."

She petted him, an affectionate gesture. "Thank you, Kiral." Looking over, she teasingly held the berry over Brendan's face. "Say 'Ahhh', please!"

_Oh, brother…_ Deciding he'd retort later, he opened his mouth (taking care to drop the 'Ah' sound) and let her drop the berry inside. Chewing, he greatly welcomed its sweet, crunchy texture before swallowing the pulp with a satisfied sigh. Against his expectations, the dull ache in his body seemed to recede, and soon after he actually felt quite refreshed.

"Any better?" she asked.

"... a little," he admitted. He tried moving an arm. To his delight, he was now able to raise it up above his body and hold it there. His legs still didn't seem quite up to par, and he couldn't shift his body using just his hands, but it was progress.

Peering down at his chest wound again, she frowned. "Huh, that's weird." At his expectant look, she continued, "It looks like it's healing already."

Now it was his turn to frown. "That's fast. Maybe that was a different Oran berry?"

"I don't have a clue." She sighed and sat down next to the water, watching the tide. "I've been seeing a lot of weird stuff the past two days."

Hazal glanced at Kiral. "I suppose you'd better get yourself some sleep, young one. You can tell Mizal that I'll take over the watch period for these next few hours."

He nodded, eager at the chance to take a break, and gently patted Brendan on the head in a semi-mocking manner. "Alright then, you just try not to annoy the big, scary humans and get yourself nearly killed again, okay?" he said jokingly.

"I'll try." At the reply, Kiral yupped and bounced off at a ridiculous speed into the forest again. Brendan and Hazal both chuckled at his antics. "You don't have to go this far for us, you know," he continued, thinking a little guiltily what human influence had wrecked on this part of the forest.

"Not at all." Hazal cocked his head at him. "I have this unusual instinct, that urges me to take care of you. I know not where it comes from, but humans in the past have never induced it in me."

"You think we're not normal?"

A shrug. "It may just be a product of old age and my mind plays tricks on me, but no, I do not."

Brendan let his head fall back onto the gravel and shut his eyes. "_I_ don't feel normal either. Haven't got much of an idea how I survived a knife wound otherwise…"

"Bren… Brendan?" May's voice called out all of a sudden. She sounded timid.

He didn't bother glancing at her. "Yes?"

An eerie silence. "Can normal humans do _this_ either?"

Something about her tone of voice set some alarm bells ringing. Melodramatically retracting his eyelids and casting his gaze over to her, where she was crouching a short ways into the water, his view soon redirected itself to her hand, which was being held over the steadier swash.

That liquid was supernaturally forming a twisting, whirling column of water around her forearm.

* * *

**That doesn't count as a cliffhanger does it? If it does I might have to go and hide behind Chuck Norris again (Bee-tee-dubble-U, Yakolev, I am a pawn of his, yes. But so is everyone else, as it is the price we pay for being allowed to live! =D).**

**And there you go! One fresh, quite long chapter (IT'S OVER... FIVE thousand words (got ya!)) done and dusted, and I wonder if I can get away with making another statement about when I can update again. Probably not. Oh well! See you next time!**

**Signing off,  
grammaguy  
**


	9. Karma

**DISCLAIMER: The relation between me and Pokemon is the opposite of me and my competitive video game friend - he owns me all the time at everything, but I don't own Pokemon.  
**

**Given that I am uploading right on the cusp of a week of painful exams, I see this update as quite a luxury and more than a little cheeky. Lol.**

**A heck of a lot of stuff's been happening while I've been gone, so I keep forgetting how nice it is to just write what you like now and then. ****Again, not an awful lot of action here (less than the last chapter, even), but it's got some interesting foreshadowing in it. I think. And... ah!**** My thanks to Yakolev, JapanDreamer09, Arceus Arcanus, Like A Boss2 and Hidden Lines for their super-mega-ultra awesome words on the previous chapter. =)**

**And, as Wheatley would put it, let the games begin!**

* * *

Orbhunt – Chapter 7

Magma Regen Site – Greenlush Valley Reserve

The past years had not been too kind to Butler.

The now twice-disgraced, former Magma scientist sat slumped in an unruly heap at the back of a makeshift prison: a storeroom containing various tall shelves of utilitarian items, such as wrenches and lubricating oil, within locked drawers, none of which had proved to be even remotely helpful is escaping his predicament. A single feeble incandescent light bulb illuminated anything not in those shelves, which amounted to a few metal boxes containing yet more tools and junk. After two hours of attempting to find a loophole in the system, he begrudgingly and reluctantly accepted that perhaps he'd been a little too thorough in designing the machine's security.

_Scratch that, _he thought glumly, _I should never have designed it at all._

In the past his creation had very nearly consumed an entire forest, its inhabitants, a group of passing trainers _and _his love, Diane, of life, and was only stopped through the immense effort of a single legendary drawing from the power of a comet. Now, his machine had indirectly resulted in the likely demise of one of those same trainers and her friend, who had tried to stop the process but had succeeded only in delaying it.

Truly, what had he been _thinking?_

Butler's mind whirled as he tried to form some half-hearted excuses for himself, but none found him any solace and he resigned himself to the fact that he was a prisoner for the organization he had tried so hard to impress. He hesitantly considered the idea of committing suicide, but knew he wouldn't have the courage to do that.

He hadn't even realised just how _zealous_ Magma were about the whole thing until he'd personally witnessed the order to slaughter the two intruders himself. Far, far too late by then…

He looked up as he heard the sound of a door unlocking. The metal frame swung open the reveal a grunt, clutching in his hand a group of Pokéballs of various types. With a vaguely disappointed look at Butler, he tossed all of them into the room at once. They landed with a series of _clacks_ at his feet.

"Those kids' Pokémon," the grunt grunted, seeing his confused expression. "And don't even bother trying to revive one of them to help bust you out. They're unconscious and won't come back till they get a full healing from a Pokémon Centre, and you're no Joy." He turned to leave. "Yeah, and we'll be on to you faster than a Ninjask using Agility if you get so much as one of them up and running."

The door slammed shut again as he left, the sound of a lock engaging a moment later. Feeling relieved that it wasn't something worse, he scuttled over to the nearest Ultra ball and released the Pokémon inside. A red flash later and the knocked out form of a Mightyena lay on the floor beside him. The Pokémon's skin and fur were marred with criss-crossing cuts and incisions. _Must have been tortured or beaten, the poor thing._

A particularly large slice along its left side that had not fully scabbed yet and still bled freely drew his worry. Showing no regard for his expensive designer clothing, he tore off a short strip of blue cloth from his shirt and began to tie it in a crude knot around its midsection. A thin line of red had already stained the fabric when he had finished. He looked grim, glancing at the other balls on the ground. Roughly judging the rough dimensions of the small room, he guessed that he certainly wouldn't have had enough space to have all the Pokémon out while they healed, so he had no choice but to sit back down and hold the hyena close, giving it a little warmth and keeping track of its breathing.

And so the scene stayed that way for perhaps the next fifteen minutes. Seeing as the room had no windows, it was hard for him to even vaguely tell the time, so he guessed it around midday sometime.

Looking sympathetically at the Mightyena after running out of other things to contemplate, he sighed and stroked it a few times on the back. "Poor thing. You got caught up in a bad team's plans, tried to slow them, succeeded at it, got knocked out for it, and for all I know your masters are-" He broke off, biting his lip, and cast a look at the other Pokéballs on the ground. He might as well bandage them all one at a time, he supposed. No sense in wasting time.

Recalling the Mightyena, Butler threw out the next closest one to him, a normal Pokéball. The large form of a still Blaziken materialised. The sight of the horrible, still intensely bleeding wounds that had been inflicted on the creature drew a gasp from the man. Focusing completely on the task he had in front of him, Butler pulled off his shirt entirely and divided it up into multiple strips, ignoring the cold air chilling his skin. The Blaziken had a particularly sickening wound on the back of his leg, where the muscles had been completely been torn to shreds, and from what he could see, the bone might have been broken as well. He may not have been a Joy, but it was easy enough to tell that it was going to be impossible for the Pokémon to recover from a wound like that. He would spend the entire rest of his life a cripple.

If he lasted that long. Forgetting his mourning, the scientist grabbed a handful of cloth and began liberally wrapping it around the leg in an attempt to stop the bleeding. It seemed to work with the first two tries, the blood flow quartering after he tightly knotted the strip he was using. He snatched up another one and seeing as the blood escaping was still too much, began work on sealing it fully.

After three gruelling minutes of winding and adjusting the makeshift bandages, Butler finally collapsed onto his rear and stared at the Blaziken's form, breathing heavily despite having done little actual work. It was mostly sealed, just the barest trickle of blood dripping out where the cloth had been saturated with it. He momentarily worried about whatever infections that wound would contract, but he had no way to deal with that, so he remained as he was, just staring tiredly into space. What a hell he had put these poor things through…

"I gave him that wound, you know."

Eyes widening and twisting his head round in surprise, Butler finally noticed Scythe, who was sitting on a box in front of the door with her legs crossed, giving him an inscrutable look. How had she gotten in there without him hearing her?

She smiled at his confusion, seemingly guessing his source, but did not answer the question. She indicated the Blaziken with a nod of her head. "I'll admit, he probably would have overpowered me had he been at full strength and if I hadn't gotten the luxury of a surprise attack. His trainer trained him well."

He forced his mouth to shut and darkened his expression. "So, what are _you_ here for?"

She uncrossed her legs, stood and leaned forward. "Just talk," she said, as if the whole situation was a friendly reunion."I have things to tell you, but let's hear what you have to say first."

He did not lower his guard. "What did you do with those kids?"

"I killed them."

Even though he had been fully expecting the answer she gave, that didn't stop a flare of anger pulsing through Butler like a lance. "_Why?_" he asked hoarsely.

She sighed, surprising him. "I told you that already and you know it. Don't make me waste my breath on repeating myself."

His memory jolted as he recalled his conversation with her in the control room yesterday, but his anger did not fade. "But they were _kids_, you idiot! Barely started to live! Why couldn't you have just kept them as a prisoner like me?"

"A better question," she said dryly, "is why we didn't just kill _you_ like _them_. They just waste manpower and space if we try and contain them. You are still somewhat valuable to us. Hence, hostage."

He snarled. "Pathetic. I can't believe I ever fell for this band of murderers and fools."

She smirked. "And whose fault is that, do you think?"

To his further anger, he saw her logic and gritted his teeth. With that, her smirk faded. "Well then, there you go. With any luck you'll be able to learn from your mistakesand use that knowledge later in life. But for now, you will be detained here, until we have need of your assistance or…" She tilted her head. "… if we no longer have need for you at all. Your own Pokémon will also be in our custody and we will not be returning them to you. I'll be there to ensure this goes along mostly smoothly. Are we clear?"

"No."

She shrugged. "I knew you'd say that, but I know you understand anyway." She gestured towards the fallen Pokémon and the balls, still lying on the ground. "And do what you want with them. We're going to release them to the wild someplace after we've completed our goal, so it makes no difference."

She briskly turnedand rapped on the door twice with her knuckles, presumably a signal to open it again. Butler saw his chance there. Standing up as fast as he could, he threw his hardest punch at her back. He knew he didn't stand a hope of the Abyss in a one-on-one fight, but he did so anyway out of a stubborn rebelliousness.

Befitting her class, she leapt to the side at the last second, letting his fist strike the door and causing him to yelp and retract it. She then casually shouldered him in the gut while he recovered, knocking him off balance and hitting his back against the far wall. He recoiled at the sudden cold shock the metal gave his bare back.

"I know you're angry already," she said irritably, looking at him contemptuously. "Don't shame yourself further by letting yourself get beaten up. You're better than that."

She took a single step out into the hallway, before pausing and reconsidering something. She glanced back at him sympathetically, where he was morosely nursing his hand. Sighing more at her own actions than at his stupidity, she reached up and pulled off her Magma-emblazoned jacket. Flicking her long hair back over her shoulder, she tossed the garment inside the room. He frowned at her.

"You're cold," she explained quietly, before shutting the door and leaving Butler to himself again.

His frown deepened as he shuffled forward a little and picked up her cloak. Sighing, and letting a single tear fall from his eye, which he promptly wiped away, he wrapped the cloak around himself, welcoming the warmth it gave him but paining him to know where it came from.

He glanced up at the bulb. _What am I going to do with myself?_

* * *

Brendan Birch simply watched, with a curious look adorning his countenance, as May, who was actually smiling now at her newfound abilities, leapt around in the shallower water, already seeming having learnt how to control water to amiraculous pillars of H2O corkscrewed around her in a rather serene dance. As he continued to observe, she thrust her hand out and one of the pillars blasted outwards like a Hydro Pump, shredding the bark off a small tree she'd aimed at.

Looking down, he then focused on the small rock in front of him, which happened to be hovering several inches off the ground. At a single willed thought, the rock did a few rotations on its horizontal axis before gently settling onto the floor again.

He shut his eyes and put his head in his hands, considering the events of the past day. He'd infiltrated, and successfully put an end to, a vicious scheme by Magma, was knocked out by some foul red energy, captured, _nearly killed _(the thought brought an uncomfortable wince to him as he subconsciously felt around the area of the stab wound. To his earlier disbelief, it had almost completely healed by mid-afternoon, leaving not so much as a blemish behind), woke up after nearly drowning, and had then discovered that he had the power of telekinesis, or at least only on the inanimate rocks, sand and dirt he stood on. May, in turn, had gained total control over water, and looked considerably more pleased with that than Brendan had when he'd attempted and succeeded in doing the same thing.

The whole controlling part had been surprisingly intuitive – he thought of what he wanted it to do, _actually _wanted it to do something, and it was so. No fancy calling of attacks or anything like that, which he was very grateful for – it would look endlessly corny if he had to yell, "Rock Throw!" every time he did something supernatural...

Putting two and two together came to an obvious cause – whatever stuff had hit the two from the pipes back in the Magma base had changed them completely. The fact that May had gone for Kyogre's side and come out with water doing her every bidding and he had went for Groudon's side and come out throwing rocks around like puppets only further reinforced the idea. Glancing down at his hand and flexing it, he felt minor disappointment that he wasn't able to breathe fire and shoot Solarbeams as well, but figured there might have been limitations to the infusion.

So, the question he asked himself next was – what would they do now? May had finished her dazzling routine of twirling water around her body in lieu of sitting on the beach, chatting excitedly with Hazal, who seemed almost in awe of what the two were doing. The fact that they were now effectively demigods in human form might've explained his odd subservience to the two...

Where was he? Ah yes. Looking back into the forest, he considered the idea of heading back and trying to find a recognisable route, which would take them back to a city to heal, and report their missing Pokémon and their predicament. He was quick to discard the last one – no doubt they would have all sorts of trouble crash on their heads when it was realised that the two had got the terraforming powers of the weather duo. He also wondered if it would be a safe idea to go back through the very base they'd just sabotaged.

_Magma might well have abandoned the place already,_ he reasoned.

Which made sense, given their plan had been stopped cold. If not, though, he was definitely not sure if his new abilities would be enough to compensate for their lack of Pokemon…

… Pokémon…

Yes, he'd woken up and found that his Pokeballs had been missing. Undoubtedly Magma had stolen them, and Groudon knew what they'd do with them. Putting on a determined look, he thought of Mimi and Ruru and the others who had been captured. There was no way he could just let them suffer while he returned to safety.

So it was chasing Magma it was.

Picking up his pet rock and standing, he strode over to May, who was entertaining Hazal with a small water show.

"… very good," Hazal was saying. "I don't have that belly, though."

May adjusted her fingers a little. The caricature of the Linoone thinned at her movement. "Better?"

"It is too thin, now… and I quite clearly have a fringe. See?" he said, ruffling said fringe with a claw.

She scowled. "You're so fussy, really. Hang on…" The water model's muscles seemed to plump up to a more realistic size and the fringe appeared. "There, that's perfect!" she crowed.

The Linoone cocked his head. "Eh, I would say it's too-"

May's entire face went a furious scarlet. "Why you little-!" Dropping her hands and causing the sculpture to disintegrate, she snatched up the Linoone viciously… and started cuddling him. "You're so cute!"

This time she was a little less cautious in how hard she hugged him. "Can't… breathe…" Hazal'sskin started turning an unhealthy shade of blue.

She paused. "Oh, sorry!" she said, and loosened her grip to continue hugging him.

The aged Linoone cast a weary glance at Brendan, who had watched the exchange with a huge grin plastered on his face. "I take back what I said earlier this morning about her being a good mate, human."

This time the boy laughed uproariously. "Oh, that's her most endearing trait, trust." Waiting until his gales subsided so he could enjoy the moment as long as possible, he finally forced his smile to fade, which came quickly after he rehearsed what he wanted to say. "Yeah, May, we have to decide what we're going to do about our stolen Pokémon. We can't stay here forever."

She did not answer him at first, squeezing Hazal up against her chest a few times, but her grinning had faded also. "Yeah…"

He sat down. "What I thought best we do," he said seriously, "Was storm right back up there… quietly. Infiltrating seemed to work last time, they hopefully won't expect us to do it again or are too dumb to fix the problem."

"And if they are?"

He sighed. "Then I'm out of ideas. Unless you want to forget rescuing your Pokémon and just head back to the nearest city."

"No." May's voice was hard.

"Then it's settled, then, I guess?" She did not look convinced, biting her lip in worry and fidgeting a little. "You have an objection."

"… sort of." She looked up at him pleadingly. "I'm not ready to hurt somebody, Brendan. I don't even know if I'm strong enough to beat whatever Pokémon they'll throw at me."

"I don't either." Brendan sagged. "But we'll have to at least try… I am definitely not leaving my friends in with that group of bastards to do whatever the Abyss they want with them."

May sniffled and buried her face in Hazal's fur in anguish. Then she frowned when she realised that the Pokémon was gently tapping a claw against the side of her head. Raising it, she blinked at the sight of him staring at her with wide, curious eyes.

"I think I can help," he offered slowly.

Brendan narrowed his eyes but looked interested. "How? Elaborate."

Hazal wriggled out of May's grip and stood at his full height. "Surely you have to have seen what Magma has done to the Pokémon that live in this forest, right?"

As savvy as ever, Brendan's eyes widened as he rapidly caught on. "So… you're willing to help us raise help from those Pokémon, basically. You can do that?"

He nodded. "Yes. The Linoone pack here is well known, and the residents generally detest those evil beings for what they wish to achieve and for evicting everyone from a comfortable area of the forest. They'll jump at the chanceto get rid of them, if they think it's doable."

May's eyes widened as she heard this as well, not quite so fast on the uptake as Brendan. She then squealed and snatched up the Linoone again, cuddling him for the third time that day. "Thank you!" she squeaked.

"Put me down or no help at all," Hazal said immediately.

Unlike before, she yelped and put him down without giggling all the while. The Linoone looked smug. "Helping strange humans is quite satisfying, you know."

"No sense wasting time, then," Brendan said hurriedly, eager to do so before the blood would start rushing to May's brain and make her pummel the Linoone back to the Stone Age. "Hazal, when can you get it done?"

"Fairly quickly, you know. Linoone are exceptional runners. I need to know when you want to make your move, though."

He considered. "I don't want my friends with them any longer than necessary. So, it'll be tomorrow. Can you do it in time?"

Hazal scratched his ear before replying. "Please. It took your other human friend less than a day to get here, while carrying you two and being hampered by a generally bad human running speed. A day is plenty."

Brendan nodded. "Sweet. Best get going now," he suggested. The Linoone scratched his ear again to get rid of the itch, and saluted mockingly in a humorously military fashion before rocketing away at terminal velocity. Brendan laughed, and looked at May, concerned. "Will you be alright by then, May?"

Thegirl looked up and frowned at him. "What do you mean?"

"But I thought you said you were… oh, never mind." Brendan smiled wryly.

She rolled her eyes. "It's okay. If I have to punch someone or blast them with water, then I will. I'm not going to faint over it or anything. But thanks for looking out for me."

He smiled again lightly. "Then that's settled." He sat down on the loose gravel. "So for the next twenty or so hours, we will…?"

"Practice, I guess." She grinned at she sat down and summoned a large sphere of water from the sea some several metres away. It hovered just in front of them. "I love this new power, actually. You just sort of think it, and it works. Just like that!" She giggled. The ball of water contorted into a vague impression of a smiley face.

He snorted derisively. "Pah. You got lucky. You can make a statue out of water one second and turn it into a razor the next. I can pretty much just throw rocks around."

"I'm sure there'll be more where that came from," she said encouragingly. "Have you tried turning it into lava or something? That'd be cool."

"Actually, it'd be hot. Really frigging hot."

She blinked. "What does-" She blinked again, and scowled ferociously. "You and your awful jokes again. Don't be a comedian when you grow up. You'd starve."

"Jokes aside," he said, forcing back another laugh, "No, I haven't tried liquidising rocks yet. I don't know how. I can't make fire or anything like that."

She looked back at her sphere of water. "Maybe I could try forming ice. Now that actually _would_ be cool."

He looked nonplussed. "Eh, I'd say freezing. Cold at the least."

He yelped as his skin stung sharply where May jettisoned a burst of cold water at his torso. "Woahwoahwoah! What gives?"

"Why were you born so _cheeky?_" she said, exasperated by his attitude. "And you said the jokes were aside!"

"They were, but for that, you're going to get a dozen more before the day is over," he chided.

"They clearly weren't, since you cracked one just after you'd said you wouldn't. And you'd probably do the 'cracking a dozen more' thing anyway."

He wagged a finger. "Ah ah ah. I said they were aside, but I never said I wasn't going to do them again, did I? Even though it was only for a few seconds."

"Why am I even having this conversation with you?" she asked herself in an utterly contemptuous tone. "We're no longer neighbours – go away."

The two stared at each other a moment longer, with wildly different expressions on their faces – Brendan's a ditzy, innocent facade and May's a completely stoic mask. This intense clash of gazes were locked in eye contact for just a few seconds more, before May gave out first and a smile began forcing its way onto her face. Not long after, both young adults were laughing as if it were the last day on Earth, the sun gently touching the horizon and signalling the start of dusk behind them.

* * *

**Although, just to clarify, I do not like Wheatley's accent all that much. On the contrary, I hereby declare GLaDOS as one of my favourite video game characters of all time, by the by. Ain't often you get to see a tsundere AI, is it?**

**So, if I manage to make it through the coming week (emphasis on 'if'), then... well, we'll have to see, won't we? Till next time. =)**

**Signing off,  
grammaguy**


	10. It's Hard Being a Human

**DISCLAIMER: grammaguy owns Pokemon! Also, he's the Wizard of Oz. No, really, it's true.  
**

**Hello, hello, hello again my faithful readers! If you're still happy to have a read despite the massive hiatus, I can do nothing but bow deeply to you in reverence. I hope this will have been worth the wait.  
**

**A lot's changed since I last updated! I've moved on to university (Queen Mary, University of London, yo!) and I'm very happy here. Of course, a change of setting means the only thing I have for company now is my trusty MacBook, which has led me to find better ways to pass the time. As a product of that, it seems my spirit for fanfiction has returned in a minor way! I've been reading a whole lot of great stories recently and I've been inspired by what I've seen, and I've started dropping the occasional review, done in my usual in-depth style. And as you can see here, I've been busy writing some of my own too!**

**My gracious thanks to Silverstein222, Hidden Lines, JapanDreamer09 and... ZXCVBNMEM (I hope I got that right xD) for their kind words of encouragement and light critique last chapter. Feels weird for me to be on the receiving end of reviews for once.  
**

**No promises on when I can get next one done, but for now, enjoy the show. It's the product of several months of being starved of a good read.  
**

* * *

Orbhunt - Chapter 8

Greenlush Valley Reserve

The familiar twinge of doubt wormed its way into May's gut once again as the hiss of an impatient Beedrill behind her made her jump slightly.

The Linoone pack had made excellent use of their time last night. Evidently a very influential voice in the area, they'd stayed true to their word and reputation and had managed to gather an impressive assortment of wild forest dwellers in the time since Hazal had first left, ranging from a few bloodthirsty Scyther to hordes of indignant Poochyena. Even a few Flying-types, such as the flight of Taillow passing over the country in their migration, had taken offense to Magma's defilement of one of their favourite resting stops and had joined as well.

May had been quite impressed with the work done… right until a Pinsir lurking at the edge of the crowd had spotted her watching the gathering and openly snarled at her to keep her distance, followed by a few other angry threats. Then she'd wished an alien spaceship would just come along and beam her away. Even though their attention had been drawn shortly afterwards as Hazal and a few other members of the forest gave a rousing speech that nonetheless emphasized 'the humans in the red and black uniforms' were the only enemy they were there for, it was still plainly obvious to May that humans as a whole were not welcome here.

Brendan, walking along beside her, hadn't said a word to her since after the whole gathering had started moving southward as one massive glacier of death with the two in tow. He'd likely come to the same conclusion as her and didn't want to attract unrequited attention from their new 'allies'.

She wasn't about to do that either.

Blinking as her attention returned to her view again, she frowned as a pair of Venonat who'd volunteered to scout ahead for the group had stopped atop a small bank of dirt and were making rapid gestures to the rest of them further back. Almost at once, the Beedrill who'd been boring its compound eyes into her back for the whole trip hissed a barely perceptible, "Finally," and flew straight past her. Having a vague idea of what they were talking about and dreading if it was true, May and Brendan both inched up to the incline, careful not to crunch any of the dead plant matter littering the floor.

A pair of Magma grunts slowly trudged along ahead of them in a tired fashion, apparently totally unaware of the hundreds of hungry eyes watching them from the canopy above and the trees. A Zubat hung upside-down almost comically from the torso half of its owner's uniform, evidently asleep, with the annoyed expression betraying his expression rather easily. A Mightyena comprised the other half of the two's Pokemon, also looking rather fatigued.

"I'm hungry," one of the two complained suddenly.

The other man grunted, apparently too tired to bother commenting on his partner's state of being.

The next few seconds would shock May to her core.

The wind changed quite noticeably at first. Going from a fairly neutral speed towards her it abruptly changed to a considerable breeze at their tail, tinged with an unpleasant feeling. This did not go unnoticed by the pair of men, who paused in their tracks and frowned at the air. The Mightyena, sensing the change also, perked up… and instantly detected the massive wave of scents coming from that direction.

"GET THEM!"

A Yanmega at the lead of the group roared his declaration moments before the Mightyena began howling in panic at the sheer killing intent radiating from the horde. The two men at its side barely got a chance to exclaim an astonished, "What the fu…?" before a tidal wave of wings, beaks and claws descended upon them from above.

May promptly found a pair of hands clamping down on her ears, pulling her down the ground and muffling the sounds of the battle. She glanced up to see Brendan also crouched down next to her, wincing at the sounds he could hear.

_Holy Arceus… they're tearing them apart._

After what seemed like an eternity but what couldn't have been more than ten seconds, Brendan slowly drew his hands away from her head, his eyes squeezed shut in grief. He took a deep breath.

"Don't look at it, just don't," he said slowly.

She nodded tightly. "Did you look at it?"

"No, but I heard it alright."

She winced. "I should have covered your ears too… I'm… I'm sorry, Brendan."

"Don't be." He shook his head. "But let this be a lesson to the both of us. And let us never speak of this again," he added.

She nodded her affirmation and stood. Cautiously making their way around the site of the bloodbath, May resolutely focused on keeping her head looking forward and not at the mess left behind. She couldn't afford to crush her resolve before they'd even gotten close to Magma's base.

Her Pokemon would need her to keep it.

* * *

Scythe cradled her injured hand as she paced about in the control room. She was, for lack of a better term, bored. But underneath it all was a growing sense of unease.

Checking the odd hiccup in all the data the technicians had read off the instruments had gotten intensely repetitive and taxing on her patience after the first few incidents, which hadn't helped her boredom. Since the fiasco yesterday, the patrols under her command hadn't had any significant run-ins with wild Pokemon at all.

Which was exactly what was worrying her. Up until then, there'd been quite frequent incursions being made all over the site by tenacious but ultimately disorganized bands of Pokemon seeking to put a stop to Magma's plans there. Nothing that the patrols themselves and occasionally the fast response units she'd set up hadn't been able to handle – only one case involving a large group of Shiftry had ever warranted significant attention from her – but it only highlighted the relative peace they were enjoying now.

She didn't like it one bit.

She desperately wanted to go out there and oversee things personally, but Maxie had insisted she remain in the machine as security and the range on the radios they used combined with the expansive, hilly geography of the area she'd designated for patrolling meant she couldn't feasibly keep in contact with everywhere at once if she went much further from the facility. The radios she'd loaned to Butler and subsequently retrieved after his capture had been state-of-the-art – not exactly mass producible. So it was here she stayed.

She slowed for a moment as her radio crackled static for the umpteenth time that morning. Lifting it to her head, she said with a voice matching her mood, "Rubaia. Go ahead."

"_Eighteenth recon. We've found bodies."_

Her stomach dropped and she lurched to a halt immediately. "Bodies?"

"_Of the tenth. It looks like they got hacked apart really fast – their Pokemon aren't even released aside from the Zubat and Mightyena dictated by protocol."_

_Holy Groudon._ There was no way they could have been killed by just a small group of Pokemon fast enough to stop them from releasing even one Pokemon. This was an organized assault.

"… okay," she said, trying to maintain a calm disposition despite her unprofessional diction. "Fall back to base now. Something big's coming for this machine and I'll need every last man and woman here to defend it."

"_Understood."_ The radio ceased crackling.

Scythe switched channels and immediately began barking orders to the other units at the other side of the patrol area. When this horde appeared, she'd be ready for it.

* * *

Truth be told, Brendan wasn't as carefree and unshakable as he let on in casual company. Inwardly, he suffered much the same flaws as the more emotional May beside him… he just hid it better.

Inside, he was trembling at the sounds he'd heard as he put a concerned pair of hands around May's head. Even as he felt her body lock up in his grip, he could hear agonized screams from both the two men in the clearing and the Pokemon they traveled with. The forest residents were so consumed in their hatred for Magma that even their Pokemon were considered acceptable targets. The screams had stopped only extremely shortly after they started, bringing him relief at the knowledge that their death had been quick, if painful, but the other sounds of tearing and disgusting squelching noises continued on for several seconds more as the furious mob literally tore them apart. Nobody deserved a death like that. Nobody. Not even Magma.

He hoped he wouldn't have to see a professional after… _this_… was all over with.

Now with their bloodlust satiated by the slightest margins, the Pokemon who flew, walked and clambered alongside them appeared a little less angry towards them both – just a little.

It was several tens of minutes of walking before something next happened. Once again, the duo froze as a Venonat far ahead stopped, turned and started signaling with their small arms at the rest of them. No glares were directed at them this time as the Pokemon hovering behind them moved on past. The two glanced at each other, with Brendan silently motioning to follow them, but he still nearly yelled in surprise when a small claw tapped him on the leg. He glanced down to see Hazal looking up at him inquisitively.

"This is the point where I believe we ought to split up," he said pointedly.

May frowned at him, not understanding. "Why? What's going on?"

The Linoone gave her a concerned look. "I'm one of the advance scouts… there's a very large group of humans in those red uniforms not far ahead. And they look as if they're expecting something important, likely us. If you two do not wish to fight alongside us, then you would be better served finding another way back to your friends."

The girl paled, but smiled hesitantly. "Thank you, Hazal."

"My pleasure," he said officiously. He didn't wait to hear Brendan's thanks before he bounded off again to the frontline.

The boy sighed. "Well, you heard the critter. We're going around. I don't want to even risk Magma spotting us and doing something nasty to our friends."

"How do you plan on doing that?" she said, crossing her arms. "This is probably going to be a mile-wide battle."

"I don't know," he said sadly. He squinted up at the canopy above and sighed. "What I'd give to get a lift…"

May had her brows furrowed in thought. "Um… Brendan?"

"Hm?"

She cocked her head. "Could you, like, lift us up there? On a rock?"

He blinked at her completely unexpected solution. "You want me to lift us up on a rock I'm levitating with my mind," he said flatly.

She nodded carefully. "I don't know how difficult it'll be for you, though. You've only lifted that rock you've got in your pocket, but I noticed that the more water I try to lift, the harder it gets…"

He scowled. "Well, gee, thanks, Miss Encouragement."

"At least try?"

"Well… oh, screw it, fine. I doubt I can do it, though."

May stood back a little bit as Brendan etched a circle in the compacted dirt with his shoe, big enough for them both to stand in. It would be a little cramped, but he didn't want to make it any bigger than strictly necessary.

And he concentrated.

And he concentrated harder.

And the small dirt circle shifted.

May gave a small gasp. "It's working!"

Feeling a small ache nagging in the back of his head, he ground out, "Yeah."

The ache intensified as he slowly pulled a perfect circle of packed dirt out of the ground. Shaking his head in an unsuccessful attempt to rid himself of the pain, he hovered it close to the ground and stepped up onto the dirt platform he'd created.

At once, the pain went to groan-worthy levels as he attempted to keep the dirt from collapsing under his weight. "Owwww…"

"It's hurting, isn't it?" May asked, grimacing.

Ignoring her question, he said, "Try stepping on it for a second," in a tired voice.

Nodding, the sixteen-year-old slowly approached and lifted a foot to place in on the circle. Slowly letting her weight on, Brendan felt the ache approach burning levels.

She lifted her other foot off the ground as she put her full weight on the disk, prompting him to clench his teeth. "Augh, no, off, off, now."

She hastily stepped back off the platform, with Brendan letting the platform drop back into the ground again. The relief was the most beautiful thing ever.

"Too much, huh?" she asked with a hesitant smile on her face.

"Tell me about it." He rubbed the sides of his head. "I could never keep that up for long enough to get us up there. My head would explode."

She sighed. "Sorry for suggesting that. I thought it would be a good use of your powers."

"As a glorified elevator?" He cracked a tired grin. "Wouldn't have been _my_ first idea. A bit mundane, don't you think?"

She looked away. "I'm willing to go to any lengths to get my friends back."

The sincerity in her voice made him feel a flash of guilt. "Maybe I should try again…"

"No." Her voice had that hardness which brooked no argument to it again. "You're not killing yourself just to get there."

He shrugged. "Well, alright then… so, have you any other bright ideas?"

May opened her mouth to give an answer, but before she could say anything a series of war cries echoed from the battleground further ahead. Looking over with wide eyes, the duo could see dozens upon dozens of Bug- and Flying-types pouring down from the cover of the brush and canopy. Moments later, another series of cries were heard as well – only this time in discernible English. That was the last thing they heard before the air erupted into a chaotic storm as several energy blasts fired from Magma overshot their intended targets and splashed down nary a few metres from the pair.

May openly screamed and instinctively crouched down to avoid as much debris as possible. Brendan, astutely observing their predicament, gritted his teeth at a very hasty plan put together in all of two seconds, and reached forward and grabbed her by the arm, pulling her onto the disk again. Concentrating as carefully as he could in the madness, the unfriendly ache in the back of his head returned even quicker this time as he slowly wrenched the disk into the air again with the two atop.

A stray Fire Blast promptly obliterated the closest tree to the hovering pair, making the air rain with hot splinters. Now with his blood boiling with adrenaline, he was able to ignore the massive pain his exertion was causing him and the diminutive platform steadily rose skywards.

As the canopy loomed overheard, the number of offending projectiles gradually dwindled as they went higher, with most undershooting them. Brendan hadn't even sworn it had been five seconds since they'd started before May interrupted his concentration by stepping off the platform onto the bough of a large tree. He wordlessly accepted her helping hand and stepped onto the branch himself. Staring dumbly back at the platform, he wondered how he'd managed to get so far… before his attention returned to his head. More specifically, how it was full of an agonizing burning sensation.

Brendan gritted his teeth as the platform crumbled and began falling the long way down. "Owwwwwwww. Fucking hell, ow. OW." It was taking his whole being to not scream his heart out at the pain.

May gave him a half-guilty, half-sympathetic look as he crouched with his head in his hands, eyes squeezed shut, wracked with convulsions. Seconds later she kneeled down and he felt her arms envelop his head in a weak hug. "Are you okay?" she asked, in a tone matching her embrace.

He groaned. "My fucking head is on fire," he choked out.

She didn't question his somewhat more offensive choice of wording, instead slowly rocking his head from side to side in a relaxing manner. "I'm sorry. I should have done something-"

He shook his head despite the nauseating feeling it gave him. "No, you're apologizing again. I did it because it was an emergency, and in any case we're up here now. We can keep moving."

She was silent for several seconds before she sighed despondently. "If even a small thing like this is going to cause us so much pain, how are we ever going to overpower Magma?"

"We'll find a way," he promised. Pulling her arms apart, he slowly stood again to avoid exacerbating his headache. "I'm feeling a little better now; thank you, May. I'm not about to do any repeat performances for you any time soon, though. I hope you understand."

"And I'm not expecting any." She stood as well and leaped over to a neighbouring branch. "I just hope you're not afraid of heights."

* * *

Whatever Scythe had been expecting, this hadn't been it. At least, not on _this_ scale.

She'd been impatiently pacing on the outside rim of the platform while speaking to one of her assassins in charge of the security around the rune site itself when she'd heard an abrupt series of cries echoing up from the forest further away. Her reply had died on her tongue as she stared in the direction of the noise in time to see a barrage of Pokémon attacks and explosions fly up from the area followed by another series of human cries screaming various orders.

Quite quickly after that, a swarm of angry Flying-types had risen up from the canopy some distance away and began making a beeline for the platform. A handful of Magmas who were also on the platform had quickly come up to see what in Arceus' name had been going on to see the advancing wall of bugs and birds. Scythe had narrowed her eyes and palmed a knife or two in her hands as her comrades released various Pokémon to in preparation.

That had been thirty seconds ago.

Unlike Pokémon battles visible to the common crowd, battles like those involving Magma and their wild enemies tended to be short and brutal. Even more so with wild Pokémon, who had no sense of restraint and focused much more on the powerful aspects of their attacks. The wave that Scythe had first spotted should have been wiped out almost instantly once they had closed to melee range, with both her and other Magmas supporting her.

Which they had. But they still kept coming.

Scythe hadn't had time to glare at the Pidgey she'd just downed with a well-aimed knife before something extremely sharp punched her in the leg, almost knocking her off balance. She looked up in surprise to see _another_ wave of Bug- and Flying-types hovering some distance away, using their superior height to launch a barrage of various attacks at the platform without fear of counterattack. Her jaw dropped and quickly reattached itself as a Sludge Bomb from a Venomoth exploded on the railing beside her, beginning to sizzling away at the hot metal. She yelled for a quick retreat before ducking into the nearest portal, with the other Magmas hastily following. She quickly slammed the heavy door shut with a loud bang, locking it soon after.

Neither the humans or their Pokémon made a sound for a moment, much more content to just gather their wits after nearly being perforated, liquidised and slaughtered, perhaps not in that order. Then, one Magma let out a slightly shaky breath.

"Orders, ma'am?" he asked nervously.

Scythe did not answer him, instead choosing to stare down at her leg. What looked to have been a Pin Missile had deeply scored her along her calf, leaving a bloody gash. A few of the men caught her gaze and winced as they saw the wound. Her growl afterwards must have been suitably vaguely targeted, as two of them took a small but unmistakeable step backwards.

Good for them.

"Get out there and make sure every single external door is shut and locked," she ground out. Her leg was really starting to _hurt_. "I want this place to be airtightwhen we're done. And after that, make yourselves useful and make sure no wild Pokémon so much as makes a step in this facility. If I catch any of you so much as blinking, I will kill you myself. Do I make myself clear?"

The group crisply snapped to attention, deciding not to give the Lord Assassin any excuse in her current temper to eviscerate them. The footsteps in the silence that followed her speech were conspicuously loud.

Scythe let out a very slow, deliberate breath before carefully standing up, cautious about putting too much weight on her newly injured leg.

When she found out who had started this revolt, she'd butcher them herself.

* * *

The Magma's fortress had looked just as unforgiving as it had yesterday, if not more so. The ivory blue metal, once close to glittering in the midday sun, was now stained all over with dark red puddles of congealed blood and the occasional dead body. And the battle had only lasted how long? A few minutes? Five, at best?

May's stomach lurched hard enough that it persuaded her to immediately turn around and not get any more horrified looks at the carnage. Beside her, with his branch creaking under his weight, Brendan gave a slight groan.

"I think I'm going to be sick soon," he wheezed.

"You're not the only one," she replied.

Turning around had the unfortunate effect of giving her a bird's eye view of the battle still raging on below, which she'd heroically managed to avoid glancing at up until now. Magma's forces had entrenched themselves behind a natural embankment and were rarely peeking over to fire the odd Flamethrower or Shadow Ball. Behind them, a battery of Camerupt, Numel and the odd Claydol were busy shelling everything beyond the raise with Rock Tombs and Eruptions in a bid to hold back the attackers, reducing the forest loam to fields of ash in seconds. A few Mightyena patrolled glaring upwards for any aerial assaults, barking as soon as a small group of Swellow tried to make a blindingly fast hit-and-run attack on the group. The Normal and Flying-types had been cut apart almost immediately as the rest of Magma instinctively wailed in their general direction.

While the casualties being sustained by the wild Pokémon were genuinely enormous and only climbing higher, it seemed as if the recent hell march towards through the woods had stirred up pretty much the entire population of the reserve against them. For every one the humans cut down, another two were ready and eager to take their place if it meant ridding themselves of the danger. Eventually, they would be forced back despite their efforts of a defense.

May's face went red after she realised what kind of analysis she'd made. She'd been seeing far, far too much these past couple of days.

"We could try and find a place less… less gruesome, if you wanted."

She turned to see Brendan giving her a pained look. Combined with his dishevelled appearance, hat and clothing now slightly torn, she hadn't remembered a time he'd looked this worn out. "If you want."

He turned back, muttering, "If _I_ want…" under his breath in a disdainful tone. She nearly winced. She hoped he wasn't resenting her for her earlier weakness. It wouldn't do for him to take all the emotional stress by himself.

Leaping to a branch directly next to the machine, Brendan glared upwards at small vent a little above his head set into the wall. From what it looked like, it had already been shut and sealed by Magma long ago. "Meh. We can't climb this anyway."

She sighed. What she would give for her trusty Blaziken… or a Flying-type…

A series of metallic footsteps echoed from the balcony several meters above them, drawing their attention. A wild Scizor leaned over the edge, glaring at the two teenagers with disapproval. She felt like nothing more than withering away under that gaze, until a radical idea sparked in her mind.

It was a _crazy _idea, but she tried it. "Excuse me! Can you give us a lift up there? We can't climb the sides."

The Scizor (and Brendan) turned to stare at her, the glare vanishing but being replaced with a look of mild annoyance. "Even if I did, human," he grated out in a series of discernible clicks, "It would not accomplish anything. The humans in red coats have sealed all the entrances up here."

Brendan balled his left hand into fists and slapped a palm with it. "We _have_ to get in somehow. You haven't tried breaking it down."

"Of course." The Scizor gave a contemptuous snort. "Your species is as bad as those Linoone sometimes, always hiding at the first sign of danger."

May frowned, not appreciating the unprovoked jab. "Well, we're not about to hide anywhere any time soon. Have you tried breaking that vent there?" she added, pointing at said hatch with a finger.

"No. It isn't large enough for me," he said flatly.

"It'll be large enough for us," Brendan countered. At the Scizor's suspicious glance, he continued, "I know you hate humans with a passion, but we have friends – your fellow Pokémon – inside there waiting for the humans in red costs to do whatever they please with. If we make it out, then you're reunited with your kind. If we don't…" He shrugged. "Then that's two less humans for you to finish off."

The Bug- and Steel-type held his gaze for a moment longer, and then grunted. "I see your point, human. I ask you to deliver our comrades to safety." May blinked, pleasantly surprised. And she thought Hazal had been the _only_ polite wild Pokémon out there.

With that said, the Scizor leaped down from the balcony, punching a handhold in the metal walls as he reached the vent. Using Bullet Punch, he rapidly dismantled the thick metal latches holding it in place and promptly tore the whole door out with a Crush Claw. His job done, the Steel-type hurled himself back up to the balcony, landing with a distinctive _clank_ of metal on metal. He turned back to regard them one last time.

"I have a word of warning for you," he said carefully. "Watch out for the red-coated female wielding the black blades. She personally downed three of the wave I was in with her attacks." His eyes gleamed. "She might actually be a challenge to take down."

Brendan thanked the Scizor for his help and watched it leave their sight… and then angrily slammed a fist against the steel of the platform. "I'm starting to regret being able to understand their speech, I think. I've heard nothing but completely xenophobic comments from them."

"He did apologise," she said meekly.

"Only after he found out we trying to rescue our Pokémon," he countered. "We don't mean anything to him except as two-legged stress balls."

She sighed. "Let's just get this over with. The sooner we leave all _this_…" She waved an arm in the general direction of the battle behind her. "… behind, the better."

"I concur." Reaching up, he grunted in exertion as he hauled himself up into the vent, clicking his tongue in displeasure. "Well, okay, this is going to be seriously tight."

"You haven't even started crawling yet and you're already rethinking your plan," she retorted. "Typical Brendan Birch."

She couldn't see his face with his body now stuck halfway into the machine, but she could just tell he was grinning like crazy. "Typical May Maple, always standing there whinging instead of getting stuff done. I'll see you on the other side, okay?"

"But I _do_ get stuff done…" she muttered, but he had already vanished into the vent. "Hey! At least help a miserable lady out here?"

* * *

**Bam! And so ends this chapter. Things are heating up for the intrepid duo and their bloodthirsty red-eyed nemesis. Though I imagine she'll be wide-eyed too once she finds out that those two are still alive and kicking! Ha!  
**

**Like I said, no promises on next chapter. My drive to write is often tempered by my drive to daydream a lot, which is quite often (and usually when I have my phone and earbuds nearby, haha). With any luck, I could have the next chapter done... by the end of the year. xD  
**

**Oh, ignore my pessimistic concerns. Thanks for reading!  
**

**Signing off,**  
**grammaguy**


	11. That Little Devil On Your Shoulder

**DISCLAIMER: Ain't not grammaguy don't never own no Pokemon series! (quintuple negative, try and make sense outta THAT one!)**

**Well, what do you know! I DID update before the end of the year! The fact that I've gotten out a regular update for once is making me squee with delight. I've missed creative writing, I really have.  
**

**This chapter actually hit a bit of a roadblock halfway through it which left it sitting around uselessly for several days as I tried to find some possible answer to the problem, but not too long ago I just said, "Oh, **** it," and wrote my way around the issue instead of racking my brains to find some silly shoehorned solution. I would have liked to make the chapter a wee bit longer (at 3,900 words before author's notes its one of the shorter chapters), but this felt most appropriate to end it at. You'll see.  
**

**Enjoy the read, folks!  
**

* * *

Orbhunt – Chapter 9

Greenlush Valley – Magma Regen Site

Deep in his makeshift cell, Butler frowned. While he hadn't left the room since he'd been thrown in there and hadn't had any contact with the outside world since Scythe had curiously loaned him her jacket last night, he was almost positive there was some considerable disruption going on outside. He'd heard frantic yells and the sounds of boots slamming repeatedly into the metal flooring through the door as their owners ran past and – much more ominously – the sounds of distant explosions echoing through the dull grey steel.

The faint glimmer of hope that it was the sounds of a determined task force sent to put an end to Magma's schemes occurred to him, in a few vengeance-filled moments. Sure, he'd almost certainly be arrested as well, but at least he could attempt to atone for his stupidity in trusting the villainous organisation.

He looked down sympathetically at the still form of an Aggron lying unconscious on the floor. The beast's mighty armour, which might probably have gleamed in the light once, was now fractured at so many points Butler wondered how it hadn't all fallen off already. Thankfully, it didn't seem to have as many wounds as the other Pokémon he'd charged himself with caring for. He surmised that the biped's thick hide had dissuaded Magma from doing much to him. Which was just as well, as he had been running out of shirt to _give_ the poor things and he didn't want to test the assassin's good will by ripping up her odd gift to him.

Sighing, he reached out and gave the Pokémon a heavy-handed pat on the head. "When you wake up, I can only hope you'll forgive me for what I've done. I hope your owners are in a better place now."

* * *

"Ah… ah…! AH…!"

"Don't you even dare _think_ of sneezing," May roared. "I'm not going to crawl through your germs in this tiny tunnel because you couldn't hold your nose."

Brendan ceased making the pre-sneeze noises. "Nah, I'm just kidding you."

She scowled, the expression sounding unusually loud in the close confines of the vent. "Not. Funny."

"Sorry, I was trying to find SOMETHING to lighten the mood," he said apologetically. "I can't stand this murky crawling all day."

'Murky' had been a bit of an understatement. In a fit of hypocritical impulsiveness, Brendan had chosen to start crawling inside a pitch-black vent instead of taking the time to look for a more comfortable way in. Well, that was assuming there _was_ one.

Plus, the fact that the two were starting to smell pretty badly was becoming nauseatingly apparent in the windless confines of the tunnel. Two days of being hurled into the sea and tromping through thick forest would probably do that to a girl.

Now that she thought about it, neither of the two even knew what the damn thing was for. It was certainly a little too big for just standard ventilation…

She froze as a horrid thought came to her. The pipeline she'd sabotaged yesterday had the same dimensions as this one, didn't it? Roughly?

She felt her face go cold as she started crawling again to not draw Brendan's attention. What reason could Magma have for linking it to the outside world? Or maybe she was overreacting and this really was an enormously overbuilt ventilation shaft…

Reality literally butted into her thoughts as her head met Brendan's backside. She hadn't even heard him stop.

Squeaking, she backed up a little as the boy gave a mildly embarrassed, "Ahem."

"Sorry, I was… thinking about things," she said bashfully.

"Well, stop thinking for a second. There's a grate here. We could get inside through it."

Still feeling humiliated, but eager to be free of the cramped conditions, she leaned as far to the side as the tunnel allowed and got a glimpse at what Brendan was talking about. An odd-looking funnel made a small depression in the pipe, and at the tip of it was a tiny hole through which light was spilling.

Brendan glared down at the room below. "Okay, I have no idea what this is for."

There was a brief silence as May expected him to continue, but never got anything further. She frowned and prompted him with, "And?"

The trainer ignored her and grunted in exertion, shortly followed by a screech of metal tearing. Her eyes widened as the light in the tunnel increased tenfold as Brendan wrenched the funnel free of the roof and dropped it into the room below with a loud _clang_. She didn't have time to formulate a sentence capable of suitably conveying her astonishment before the unstoppable teenager lifted his legs through the gap and followed the metal scrap, landing quietly on the floor.

Crawling forward to peer through the hole, she saw what looked to be a storage room full of cardboard boxes of foodstuffs, with an doorless frame leading into a small hallway. Brendan grinned back up at her bemused expression. "Surprised?"

"How… how did you…"

"Tear the thing off?" he finished. At her nod, he continued, "I noticed it yesterday and did a small test earlier today. I'm surprised you haven't seen it yet. We're – well, at least, I am – a lot stronger physically, probably for the same reasons we're – well, y'know…"

She nodded again slowly. "Okay." She hurriedly followed him down, relieved to be out of the pipe at last. "Still don't know what that thing is for."

He shrugged. "And now it doesn't matter. Let's go, don't wanna' spend any more time in this place that we need to."

Concurring perfectly, May trailed the boy as he cautiously peeked out into the dark throughways of the Magma machine and, after making a decision on whether or not to split up (look where _that_ had got them), both teenagers made haste in a northerly direction.

* * *

Hazal felt the glass creak in protest. "Almost there, my friends! Not much more now."

The trio of Linoone that had accompanied him to the top of the human construction and the Scizor, Heracross and Kricketune that had joined him in his demolition did not utter a word at his statement, instead lighting their claws/horns/pincers with various attacks for one last blow. Hazal himself readied a Slash attack and raised his foreleg. "On three, now… one… two… _three_!"

The reinforced glass dome making up a small portion of the roof of the machine hadn't stood a prayer against repeated bouts from the likes of Brick Break, Rock Smash and Fury Cutter, explicitly meant for breaking enemy defences. In one giant crash, the sphere of glass shattered into so many millions of fragments, falling into the great hall below.

Several attacks fired back up from the defending Pokémon below quickly returned the favour, with Shadow Balls, Fire Blasts and Dark Pulses alike slicing through the air where Hazal had just been standing. He felt his throat suddenly go dry as the air became conspicuously parched.

As soon as the first volley ended, the Kricketune at his side leapt into the hole, letting out a terrifying Perish Song as he fell. Despite immediately covering his ears, Hazal couldn't help but feel several twinges of pain as his sensitive hearing picked up a few notes nonetheless. He could easily hear the agonised yells of the Pokémon and Magmas the attack was intended for, however.

Without missing a beat, the Scizor on his other side who'd been readying himself with Swords Dance thundered to life with a Bullet Punch, lancing into the fray and immediately knocking out two Poochyenas with solid blows to the head. However, he had to quickly beat a hasty retreat as a pair of Whismur who proved immune to the Song quickly let loose a wave of Supersonic at the Bug-type. The Heracross, not to be outdone, did much the same, beginning to brawl with the various Fire-types in the room despite his disadvantage.

Not one to merely sit back and watch, Hazal and his Linoone brothers leapt down and got to work like a well-oiled machine. Almost as soon as he landed he was back in the air again, lunging at the nearest enemy – a Golbat that had grounded itself from the auditory overload – and set upon it with Fury Swipes. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted his nest mates Yural and Palal making quick work of a Houndour who'd gotten too close.

The scene of apparent wild Pokémon victory was rapidly extinguished. The Golbat in his claws had just gone limp from its injuries when a cacophony of screams – screams of pain – sounded from the other half of the room. Turning, he spotted unusually dressed Magmas pouring in from a hatch that had opened in the wall, hurling sharp blades as they went. A strike force of several Crobat, and a Claydol preceded them, firing precision Air Slashes to cover their entrance.

The Kricketune who'd sacrificed his wellbeing to incapacitate the original occupants of the room was smacked flying by a hail of attacks. The group of Taillow who'd followed them in to the machine but hastily decided that this was a little too much to handle not moments before had several members knocked out of the sky by Rock Tombs from the Claydol and throwing knives from the strange humans, with the survivors not thinking twice in flying right back out the way they came. The Scizor, who lacked any form of quick escape, hurled caution to the wind and lunged for the group with another Bullet Punch… only to pass right by them and make a break for the open portal. His attempt was quickly snuffed when Claydol slammed the thick door shut with Psychic.

Half of the Magmas turned to regard Hazal, Yural and Palal, who were left alone on the chamber floor.

The spike of fear that ran through him was purged along with his rational thought as pure instinct took over his limbs. He quickly conjured a Protect as a storm of Air Slashes began to tear at the ground around him. The volley had no sooner ended than even more attacks were already flying at him, but Hazal promptly used Double Team, obscuring himself in dozens of copies. Each copy then individually made a break for any and every handhold along the wall he could see.

"Claydol, Trick Room!"

The Claydol mumbled a series of hollow sounds which Hazal couldn't understand… and then the walls of the room gained an eerie blue sheen and his body slowed to a crawl. Luckily, so did the other forty-odd illusions around the room, all wearing the same confused expression as he did.

Roaring a challenge, the Heracross, whom Magma had missed by dint of flying up one of the walls to wait out the assault, leapt down, his speed amplified by the Trick Room. Two of the Crobat, already busy with the Scizor, stood no chance at evading him in the odd environment and were punted into opposite corners of the room where they immediately were knocked out. The Bug-type got no further than that, as the Claydol who'd cast the aura in the first place drew a bead on him with one of its many eyes and abruptly smashed the Heracross full-on with a Psybeam without prompts from its trainer. The beetle skidded to a halt with an effort, looking somewhat dishevelled, and growled another challenge. The Claydol made no sound to acknowledge it, its body gaining a light blue aura as it prepared another Psychic attack.

Hazal forced his attention away from the action to focus it on the two Whismur standing in his way.

Opening their mouths and screaming with all their might, the two diminutive Pokémon began dispelling clones left and right with Hyper Voice. Still under the grasp of Trick Room, Hazal had no chance at evading it as the two began to turn towards him…

He felt a surge of energy fill him as Yural, who'd already made it halfway back up to the glass dome, used Helping Hand, and flung what looked like a large chunk of sheet metal at the duo. The left Whismur was promptly bowled over as the chunk connected with its head with a sickening crack. The other, seeing its life in immediate peril, shut up and retreated back to its allies instead.

Or, he would have, had Hazal not used Pursuit and smashed the Whisper Pokémon harshly into the floor. Looking up, he could see the Heracross on his last legs as the few remaining Crobat pelted him with Air Slashes. The Scizor had not been faring much better – his attempts at disabling some of the trainers themselves had met with stiff resistance from the Claydol and, surprisingly, the humans themselves.

Hazal's ears cocked around around as yet another portal elsewhere in the room opened to release another swarm of lesser Pokémon and more Magma troops. Giving up all notions of saving the two Bugs, he called upon his powerful legs to propel him straight towards the nearest wall and nearly halfway up its height before reaching out and grabbing a small tubular vent set into the wall. Turning one last time, he spotted the Heracross now being hurled across the room by the Claydol, not rising after landing heavily on the floor. The Scizor, badly wounded already from his efforts, made one last ditch attempt to use another Bullet Punch to go through the second opened portal. This time, he succeeded, the Claydol not quite having the fortitude to manage the Trick Room and use Psychic from across the room at once. The portal slammed shut moments after the Bug- and Steel-type fled.

Eager to avoid being spotted and eviscerated, he exerted his hind legs and propelled himself back up to the ring housing the shattered glass dome. Yural and Palal were waiting for him, looking somewhat tired.

"Well, that did not work out as well as I hoped it would," he said grimly.

"So we can see," Palal replied in an extremely dry voice that reeked of disapproval. "The humans are gathering their forces from across the forest. Though we will outnumber them still, they are a coordinated force when roused. Our remaining here is a dangerous gambit."

Hazal frowned again. "The two humans we escorted here… where are they?"

The two Linoone exchanged glances, apparently none the wiser. "No idea," Yural muttered.

Hazal grunted. "I assured them I would help them rescue their Pokémon friends. I hope they understand that not letting them perish would be part of that. Yural, get either you or another runner in to alert them of our impending retreat. They will have to try to rescue their friends some other time."

Palal stared at his fellow elder. "You realise, Hazal," he said warningly, "that you are placing the survival of two humans you found washed up on the beach over that of our clan."

Hazal cocked his head. "If you met them personally, Palal, I think you would find that they do not appear to be quite 'human' at all."

The two Linoone only exchanged another glance in unspoken confusion.

* * *

They were in that room again.

Superficially, the nexus of thick piping looked precisely the same as it had before, when the duo had first entered the machine to conduct some sabotage of their own. Now, though… Brendan frowned intently at the thin wisps of energy still traversing the pipe, the Murkrow's feet deepening on his forehead. The tendrils inside just struck out to him in a way he couldn't quite understand, with some hidden instinct convincing him utterly that this was an abomination, a defilement of nature that never should have existed.

He supposed this was yet another thing to add to his list of demigod quirks, alongside floating rocks, splitting headaches and superhuman strength. It wasn't much wonder the Pokémon gods so rarely dared to gaze upon the world they presided over. A lesser species effectively playing Arceus? They'd probably fly into an uncontrollable rage and attempt an impromptu genocide of humanity upon seeing something like that.

Neither teenager had said a word since they'd stumbled upon the room in their blind navigating earlier on. The corridors had been conspicuously devoid of any Magma troops this time around, undoubtedly owing that to the raging battle still audible outside.

"I want to kill something," May muttered in a chillingly dark voice.

Startled at both the abruptness of her statement and the rather terrifying content of it, he jumped and turned to stare at her in disbelief. The girl wore on her face a look of smouldering anger as she glared at the energy in the pipeline. Moments later, she blinked, and her eyes widened. "Wait, what did I say?"

Brendan didn't say anything to that, instead focusing on returning his shocked expression to a carefully neutral one. "Something I hope I misheard…"

Her hand shot to her mouth as horror overcame her denial. "I… I can't believe I just said that…"

"I can't either." He sighed, putting a hand to his forehead. "Just… don't give in to any... weird urges that you might get. No matter how appealing it sounds."

She took a shuddering breath. "We'll never be able to go back after this," she said quietly. "Not ever."

Her words were nearly enough to make him wince, but he schooled its outward appearance into a concerned look. "Let's tackle this one problem at a time," he said in what he hoped was an encouraging tone. He gave her a light tug on the arm to pull her over the same console they'd used to orient themselves during the last visit. "If you were Magma, where would you imprison captured Pokémon?"

May slowly regarded the map. "I have no idea," she said flatly. "There's rooms everywhere and I don't know what's labelled what."

"Oh, okay…" Peering down at the map, he knew exactly what she was talking about. "Erm… well, we can steer clear of those two areas," he said, pointing at the two maintenance rooms which the duo had both tackled solo. "No sense in putting prisoners in probably the most important rooms of them all. And that whole bit there," he continued, indicating the general area of where they'd just been, "we can ignore. We just passed that place on our way here, and we checked every room and didn't find anything."

"That's assuming Magma even bothered to let them live," May said weakly.

"You're doing it again, May." Brendan watched her contemptuous expression slowly degrade into a small frown. "And don't think like that. We're not going to just give up on our friends just because there's the _chance_ they've been done away with."

It was her turn to sigh from sheer annoyance. "I've been getting seriously cranky lately."

"It's not hard to see why." He cracked her a weak grin. "Anyone else would be downright pissed off by now."

She gave a derisive snort but declined to say anything in return.

He continued with his deductions. "Now this leaves us three areas. There's this big hall up here -" He pointed at the said large circular room at the top of the schematic. "- we can scratch that one. You're not gonna' keep a prisoner in there. That makes two areas our friends might be in. This group of storage rooms over here, and the armoury over there."

"We're not _splitting up_, Brendan."

He held his hands up in a placating gesture. "Woah, slow down there, never was gonna' say we were. Which one do you want us to check first?"

"I don't really care." She frowned. "Though going to the armoury sounds like a silly idea. 'Hey, let's try and avoid trouble, but we're just going to walk right into their centre of firepower while we're at it, you know?'"

"Storage it is, then."

Both teenagers blinked and turned around to look at the hallway they'd entered from, hearing a rapid scuttling of claws on the metal. No sooner had they finished their movement when a brown-and-white blur rocketed into the room, skidding to a halt fast enough to give the two an unpleasant ringing sensation in their ears from the sound.

A youthful Linoone blinked innocently back up at them. "Oh, hello," he greeted.

May gave him a confused look. "What are you doing here? How did you find us?"

"Well, gee, thanks for the warm welcome," he said sarcastically. When their stern expressions did not change, he drew back holding a claw sheepishly. "Alright, alright. A Scizor you apparently met earlier told us he opened up an entrance along the side of the contraption for you to get in by. I was sent to bring you back so you could live another day."

"Live another day? What? What's happening?" Brendan dreaded the answer to that.

"We're losing the battle."

Despite himself, he found his face contorting into a grimace at the Linoone's words.

The Pokémon continued, "We didn't manage to spearhead through their defences as quickly as we'd hoped, and now Magma's pulling back all their forces from across the forest. It won't be too long before we'll be overrun and forced back. Obviously we figured you wouldn't want to be stuck here when that happens."

May visibly gritted her teeth. "We're not leaving without our Pokémon. We're _this_ close. We'll almost never get another chance like this again."

"I have to agree with the girl," Brendan added. "Magma's never going to let something like this invasion happen again. It's purely because they've been caught off guard that we've made it as far as we have."

The youngling looked… concerned. "It's funny."

"What is?"

He tilted his head. "Hazal said you'd be different from other humans, but I wasn't expecting it in _this_ way. You just don't seem… normal to me," he added lamely, when their looks became more inquiring.

May scowled. "Maybe that's because we're not," she snapped. Ignoring the Linoone's surprised expression and Brendan's disapproving glare, she turned back to the map. "Okay, seems we _are_ going to split up, then."

That was enough to wipe all negativity from the teen's face. "Huh? But I thought you didn't want to-"

"We're running out of time," she stated matter-of-factly. "We need to cover both of these places, and fast. You can take the armoury, I'll do the storage place."

Brendan was now frowning suspiciously at her. "Why the sudden change of heart, May?"

The girl slowly lifted a balled fist up and regarded it. At a single willed thought, water droplets condensed from the surrounding air and formed a small tentacle of clear liquid, which curled around her wrist and hand. The light twinge of pain at the back of her head was not helping her attitude. "Let's recap. Over the past two days, I've been dunked in primordial energy, barely survived being gutted by a knifing nutcase with bloody eyes, narrowly escaped drowning, found out I'm suddenly this magical Kyogre-human hybrid, spent the better part of a whole morning crawling through thick forest, been forced to listen to another human being being torn apart and killed, nearly got blown to pieces by stray shots, watched a grisly battle that nobody should ever have to see, spent the last fifteen minutes spelunking in dingy pipeline and cramped corridors, found out I'm suddenly getting these aggressive urges like some wild animal, and then I finally found out that the events of the past day might just have turned out to be completely pointless because the Pokémon we travelled with were too incompetent to do things properly."

She looked up at him, her face constricting with fury. "I'm in a _seriously_ bad mood right now. Right now, I need to blow this steam off on something."

She was stalking out of the room before Brendan could even formulate a protest of sufficient magnitude to stop her.

* * *

**Ho ho! Our resident buxom gal had decided to embrace her power and get dangerous! Plenty of action to be seen here kudos to the third parties involved, but rest assured, things will also pick up next chapter for our heroes (and villains) too. I can tell I'm going to super-enjoy writing the next chapter. I've had daydreams about how much awesome stuff I can cram into those scenes since I conceived them, lol.****  
**

**But not today! For now, you must content yourselves which that which you've just read. Stay frosty, my faithful readers.  
**

**Signing off,  
grammaguy  
**


	12. Veni, Vidi, Vici

**DISCLAIMER: I once owned Pokemon, but then some nobody called Satoshi Tajiri stole it off me. Jerk.  
**

**Greetings again, mon amigos (I THINK that's how you use it)! Took a while longer than usual to get this chapter properly running since it's actually nearly 8000 words! That makes it the single longest chapter so far and the largest chapter I've ever written for a fanfic! Kekeke.  
**

**Lots of action this chapter, involving our favourite witty hero and snarky heroine. I'm sure you'd rather I cut to the chase, so I'll end this author's note here.  
**

**Enjoy the show.  
**

* * *

Orbhunt - Chapter 10

Greenlush Valley - Magma Regen Site

"She's being rather belligerent about this," Yural observed blandly.

The human – Brendan, was that his name? – slowly shut his eyes. "She snapped at me a couple of times earlier in annoyance, but that didn't seem all that out of place for her. Now she's just gone straight-up berserk." He indicated the curious flowing tendrils of energy within the mess of pipes in the centre of the room. "It was probably that stuff in there. She can't stand looking at it. Even _I_ can't stand looking at it."

Yural glanced over at the nexus, cocking his head in curiosity. "I don't see anything special, just more work of evil humans."

Brendan gave him an odd glance, possibly trying to gauge the subtext in his statement. "Just so you know, bro, we're not ALL villainous fiends looking out only for our own selfish goals."

"I know, I know, you're living proof of that." Yural grinned at him. "The clan in general's quite tolerable of your kind, which is unlike most of the other Pokémon in the forest. Apparently it was a group of humans who saved the lives of a few of the clan elders, before I was born. You're lucky we were the ones to find you or you otherwise might have just made a pleasant snack for some lucky scavengers."

Brendan blinked. "Hazal never told us about that bit. The human rescue, I mean."

"Oh, they don't like to talk about it that much." Yural waved a claw and snorted. "Want to maintain appearances, or something silly like that. Not that their policies don't make it painfully obvious anyway."

"Huh. Interesting," the human mused. He turned his back to the Linoone. "Well, as fascinating as this discussion has been, I should be going. May's probably already raised a dozen alarms everywhere by now, and time's of the essence." He craned his neck to look back at Yural. "Thanks for the warning, but don't wait for us. If we get out, we get out. If we don't…" He shrugged.

He nodded his head in understanding. "For what it's worth, good luck. Don't let those black-dressed humans nail you."

He paused. "Black-dressed humans?"

"Oh, you don't know about them?" Yural shuddered. "Terrifying fiends on the battlefield. Have a fetish for knifing everything in sight. Dress rather conservatively."

The human's eyes widened in recognition at the knifing comment. "Oh, THOSE humans. You mean there's more than one of them?!"

"Why, yes," he said slyly. "You already met one?"

"More closely than I ever wanted," he muttered. Brendan seemed extremely agitated about the topic. "Alright, thanks for the info. I'll be out of your fur now." And with that, he stomped off.

Yural did not bid him another farewell. The tension had already gotten thick enough to silence a Loudred.

* * *

Although still smouldering from earlier, May's footsteps were by contrast rather more subdued and careful. While her temper was dealing mostly with her more emotional restraints about attacking another human being, the logical part of her brain was still telling her that attracting the attention of every Magma in the vicinity was probably not the best of ideas.

Around her, the machine hummed with immense power that she still didn't know the source of. The constant source of background noise hadn't been audible before with the two of them stalking around the narrow corridors with their less-than-subtle footsteps, but now, it was wildly apparent. But this hadn't been the case when she'd gone solo on her previous time in the machine, either… May slowly focussed her vision on each and every groove and bolt set into the flooring, ceiling and walls. The details she could make out were incredible, being perfectly sharp and defined. Were all her senses improved, too? Was this another consequence of effectively being part-Pokémon now?

Well, at least _that_ part she didn't have a massive problem with.

Ahead, the storage area she'd been consisted of dozens of door on the same hallway, which had two corners in it, forming a Z shape. It'd take ages to search them all. But she'd have to, anyway.

Approaching the first thick-set steel door at the end of her particular strait, she gave the handle an experimental tug. It didn't budge. She went back a couple of paces to stare at it some more, going over things in her head. Then, she reached forward, grasped the handle and gave it a HUGE tug.

She succeeded in wrenching the entire hunk of metal straight off the door.

Chuckling at her newfound strength, she then gave the door another tug with her other hand using the small circular hole left behind. It still didn't budge. Now thoroughly annoyed, she dropped the handle and scowled as she tried to think of another method.

At least until she heard the telltale signs of footsteps echoing from _behind_ her.

She whirled around so fast her hair smacked her in the face, but she couldn't miss the perfectly weighted throwing knife tumbling through the air heading for her neck, almost as if in slow-motion. Twisting her entire torso, she just barely managed to avoid being impaled as the knife whistled past her and clattered into the door at her back, clattering to the ground a moment later.

Her assailant, who had evidently snuck up on her while she had been distracted and now resolutely stood several metres away, had not decided to follow up his unsuccessful sneak attack, so May took the time to take in his appearance. The man was dressed in a very heavily-modified version of the traditional Magma attire, with the uniform considerably more form-fitting and sporting much more black in its palette. At his thighs, a holster for several identical blades was hanging, as well as various tools like a walke-talkie, keys, a security card and (strangely) a pair of fuzzy dice. The man's face was mostly obscured with his hood and scarf wrapped around his mouth, but his eyes were twinkling.

"And what have we _here_?" he asked in an amused tone.

May slowly straightened and let out the breath she didn't realise she'd been holding. She quietly fingered the sachet of water she had at her waist, reassuring herself that it was there. "Who're you?" she demanded coolly.

He spread his hands, decidedly rather relaxed about the whole thing. "The name's Jaeger! Black Souls division! And to whom might I have the honour of speaking?"

He clearly wasn't taking her especially seriously. She decided to humour him. "I'm May," she said shortly.

"May…" he mused, putting a hand to his jaw in thought. "A pretty name for a pretty girl! I like it! But what's a lady like you doing out here? Sightseeing, I suppose?"

She didn't have a clue where he was going with this. At best, he was probably toying with her. "What's it to you?"

"And she's got attitude, too." He yanked the scarf down to expose a face-splitting grin. "Well, I'm sorry, ma'am, but the tour guide changed his route. Can't let you just wander around here and ruin everything. Or did they not tell you this was off-limits to tourists?"

"And you think _chatting_ with me is going to make me leave?" she asked, exasperated. This guy just rubbed her the wrong way, right down to the lecherous smile.

"Well, no, of course not!" he chortled. "But what are you gonna' do if you don't, anyway? You haven't even got any Pokeballs," he added lightly, pointing at her empty belt for emphasis.

She gave a very quick, pointed glance at the twisted handle at her feet.

She smirked when he blinked in surprise. "Huh. Maybe you got a couple of monkey wrenches stashed away somewhere on you. With a chest like yours you could probably get away with the whole _toolbox_." His grin returned in full force. "Anyway, much as I'd love to have a gander at that secret compartment myself, the boss would probably cut my heart out if I did that. She's pretty feminist like that. So, how about I make this easy for you? I knock you senseless, get her to supervise while we all rough you up some – just not in _that_ way – to get the point across, and then we toss you on the nearest route with a cardboard box and a pair of carrier bags to wallow in your own self-pity?"

Her lips pressed into a dangerously thin line. "Your boss?" she asked, ignoring pretty much the entire rest of his tirade.

He frowned for just a moment, but continued on his idiot streak the next. "Yeah, my boss," he said, just a little hesitantly. "We call her the Reaper! Makes sense, given how she leads the Souls and kills people for a living. And her name fits, too." He chuckled, presumably at some inside joke. "Oh, good Lord Groudon, her name."

"And that is…?"

He managed to keep his mirth under control for just a second. "Scythiona Vidon Xiona," he spluttered, hysterics seemingly barely a moment away.

Despite herself, May couldn't help but smile in amusement. "Sounds like something out of Star Trek."

"Oh, we always assumed it was based off a medicine," he said, wiping a tear from his eye. "Rumour has it the last guy who said her full name around her ended up with his head being mounted on a pike somewhere in Ever Grande. Caused quite a scene. Ah… Scythe…" He suddenly looked worried. "Just, er, don't tell her I said any of this - she'll probably castrate me or something if she found out." He fully regained his composure and stuck his hands in his pockets, grinning once more. "So! I've talked enough. You going to come quietly? Or do I have to drag you kicking and screaming the whole way?"

She paused, and then slowly began to feign shivers of terror. "Um, there's a guy behind you with a rock and a funny wig."

The moron gave her a look of mock horror. "Oh, gods! I've clearly been caught completely and utterly unaware. Whatever shall I do?" He turned to glance back at the empty corridor behind him. "Oh, my, looks like there's nobody th-"

May shot her hand out, with a thick tentacle of water following it and shooting out from her canteen.

Hearing the sudden movement, Jaeger turned back, frowning. "Woah there, lady, no funny stuff or I'll have to-"

The jet of water slammed him full in the chest with the force of a Hitmonchan's prized punch. He didn't even have the time to exclaim an astonished, "What?" before he landed heavily on the floor, completely winded.

May whirled her hand as the tendril of water formed itself into a sharp spike and she abruptly sent her palm downwards, with the spike mirroring her movement and accelerating towards his torso. Seeing his life in immediate danger, he scrambled to his feet as the blade skewered the floor next to him. "Ha, you missed!" he crowed, even as his hand went to his belt to withdraw his walkie-talkie.

He didn't find it. Blinking, he stared down to see the device conspicuously absent from his waist and finally spotted its current location of being stapled to the floor with a foot-long spike of liquid. "You bitch."

May lifted her hand again, watching the water slowly yank itself out of the ruined radio and dissolve into a floating orb. "You're a jackass, do you know that?"

He spat a glob of saliva at her, falling about four feet away from him. "I don't know what you are, you freak, but I'm gonna' kill you." And with that, his hand blurred for his knife belt.

Once again in slow motion, May watched and took in every detail as she stared at his hand. Judging by the angle at which he was moving it, it looked like he was going to throw two knives at once. Briefly doing a quick assessment, she surmised she couldn't attack him at her range just yet.

The movements just seemed to come naturally to her, as if she'd known them her whole life and then some. A few minute twitches of her fingers quickly split her water sphere into a pair of identical smaller ones. Moments later, after he'd snatched up his blades and was about to hurl them, a subtle movement of her whole hand manoeuvred them both into place.

The two orbs disintegrated and were splattered all over the place, but both knives went completely awry, veering off their intended path to hit the ceiling and wall instead. Jaegar probably hadn't even realised what had happened before her hand was flexing again to recover her lost water droplets into a half dozen tiny blades of her own. With a forceful push, she sent all of them hurtling towards the assassin.

To his credit, Jaeger looked fairly experienced with dealing with unexpected attacks, but even he couldn't dodge six attacks at once. Four of the watery blades whiffed, passing harmlessly by, but the other two struck home, impaling his uniform easily to sink perhaps a couple of centimetres into his body before their own momentum squashed them out of shape instead.

May silently snapped open her closed fist, causing those two masses of water to suddenly form vicious spikes inside his body.

Jaeger let out a gasp of pain as the two water blades suddenly tore the wounds open further, bleeding freely. They were minor, as far as wounds went, but it seemed he'd realised he certainly couldn't afford to go all-out offensive on her. Palming another two knives, he sent them in her general direction to buy himself some time.

Recalling her six water masses to intercept them in midair, Jaeger used the brief respite he had to backpedal. His knives could cross the distance far easier than her cumbersome shapeless blobs of water.

Of course, he only had so many knives. She just had to outlast him.

Jaeger suddenly began hurling knives at an incredible rate, seemingly trying to overwhelm her defences with sheer numbers. But it wasn't much use. Her mind was in overdrive, analysing every path each one took thoroughly and her subconscious did the rest by shifting her fingers by just the right amount to block each toss. Each time they did, the water splashed the corridor but reformed moments later. With a few subtle shifts, she had one of them slowly close the distance between it and him.

When he ran out of knives on his waist belt, he started pulling them from the inside of his jacket too.

"And you say _my_ compartment is roomy?" she asked in an accusing tone.

He didn't respond, instead frowning and pausing for just a moment. Evidently deciding he wasn't going to get anywhere just tossing knives and couldn't close with her fast enough, he quickly turned around and bolted.

Immediately realising that him getting away would be spelling absolute doom for her, she made her move. The lone water sphere she'd been advancing crossed the four or so metres between them in a half-second, knocking out one of his legs from beneath him. His eyes widened and he stumbled forward to catch his footing – and fell prey to another water blade she'd pulled forward to fully trip him up. The last blade she'd deliberately ignored whistled past her side with a slight rush of air.

Now on the floor, Jaeger only managed to get to his knees before a thick tentacle of water snapped itself around his neck. His eyes widened in horror and he reached up in a desperate bid to tear it off, but May had other ideas. She abruptly bent her arm at a ninety-degree angle, with the tentacle – and Jaeger's head – following it. The assassin's forehead smacked into the steel flooring with a sickening clank. May then twisted her arm and promptly bent it the other way. Now it was the back of the dazed Jaeger's head to smack into the ground with an even louder clank.

For a few moments, there was silence as the girl stared at the unconscious man, trying to discern any signs of trickery. Once she was satisfied, she slowly let out the second breath she didn't realise she'd been holding in as many minutes. Her hand twitched, letting the tentacle slide off from its point on his neck. No sooner had she done so than Jaeger's body collapsed into a heap.

Gods, had she _killed_ someone?

No, no, she hadn't. His chest was still rising and falling a little erratically as he shakily drew in breaths. She sighed as welcoming relief flooded her body.

So too did the agonising migraine throbbing in her brain.

Her smile changing to a grimace in an instant, she threw a hand up to her temple, groaning. "So that's what it feels like," she mumbled. Damn, that _hurt_. She felt a brief pang of regret for basically forcing the role of transportation on Brendan outside. Granted, it _had_ worked, and the idea had probably saved their lives, but still…

Trying to move her head as little as possible to avoid aggravating her splitting headache, she leaned down and snatched up the keys and security card from the assassin's belt. They'd almost certainly come in handy.

Turning around and marching back down the corridor with her original intention now in her mind, she carefully unlocked each door as they came. In the first half-dozen or so, she found nothing other than a few empty rooms full of utilitarian items. In the seventh, however…

May heard the lock quietly click open. There wasn't anything out-of-the-ordinary to suggest there was anything in this room. She still had several more to go. All thought of that fled her mind once she peeked in through the doorway, which she promptly flung open with enough force to cause the hinges to screech in protest.

Her Aggron was lying slumped in the middle of the room, with a small pile of Pokeballs to one side. The Pokémon's impressive bulk had shoved the other living occupant to the back. That same occupant stared back at her, slack-jawed with a mixture of fear, disbelief and shock on his features.

"May…?" Butler whispered.

"_You_," May hissed, familiar anger now contorting her delicate features.

* * *

Something serious was happening. And very close by.

Brendan had been traversing the Magma machine on his way to the armoury when he'd heard some very inauspicious noises emanating from the cold metal walls. A halt and a hand to his ear revealed more details – vicious thuds that couldn't possibly have sounded very pleasant up close.

Although he knew May had gone to the other side of the place in her half of the search, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of worry and curiosity – if she was or wasn't involved, respectively.

Quietly making his way towards the source, he found a thick portal door as the last obstacle in his path. It slid open on perfectly oiled hinges, as they always did.

A gust of cool afternoon air wafted into his face.

Surprised, he pushed it open further and stuck his nose around the corner. A short corridor with a dead end to his left and an opening to a large circular room greeted him. What he could see in the room intrigued him – a long, winding spiral staircase extending down from the floor to the forest below. So this was how Magma normally got up here.

A badly battered, bruised and bleeding Scizor stumbled into his view of the room… followed by none other than that terrifying red-eyed woman from earlier. She still wielded the nasty black knife that she'd plunged into his heart in her hands, which she was twirling manipulating with cruel efficiency.

The Scizor, looking completely delirious, swung a clumsy pair of claws in a vague approximation of an X-Scissor. The lady smoothly sidestepped the attack and raked the back of his leg. The Bug-type fell to its knees, drawing in sharp and laboured breaths, before the assassin finally put him out of his misery and stabbed the blade directly into the spine, just underneath its neck. The Scizor convulsed madly as if its entire body had received a jolt of electricity, and then crumpled stiffly to the floor, unmoving.

Everything, Brendan included, went deathly still as the woman stared down at the body. It was only then he realised she was quite audibly breathing hard. Evidently the battle had taken a lot out of her, but he still wasn't quite ready to test himself in a battle of life-and-death.

He was just contemplating backing off when the woman whirled, her arm a blur as she tossed a knife directly at him. His eyes hadn't finished widening before he reflexively yanked his head back out of sight. The black sheen flew past where his head had just been to clank against the steel walls.

"You're rather poor at hiding," a drily voice noted from the stair room.

He locked up as his body went to disturbingly cold in a matter of moments. That was impossible. How had she known he was there?!

"Come out. It's either that or you run and die tired."

His body trembled as he slowly stepped out into the corridor, carefully keeping the door open in case of any emergencies.

The lady stood at the entrance to the corridor from the room, adopting a carefully prepared stance as she finally got a look at him. Superficially, she looked completely different to her last appearance, but as she curiously lacked Magma's trademark red jacket, he finally got a good look at her face. Jet-black hair hung in knotted tresses down just past her shoulders, framing a very sharply-angled visage that might have looked quite pretty any other day of the week were it not for the look of sheer contempt she wore. It was impossible to mistake the way she carried herself, though, not to mention the very same wicked knife she was holding a little loosely in her fingers as she had previously. A handful of smaller knives were attached to a belt on her waist.

Her expression was increasingly becoming one of disbelief and shock, however, as his identity finally clicked within her.

"You?" she whispered.

* * *

Butler shivered. "… me?"

He counted his blessings that the Aggron had been out at the moment. Were it not his body being directly in between him and the murderous-looking May, he feared there wouldn't be anything stopping her from simply marching over and cutting him to shreds with her bare hands.

"Yes. You," she replied. Her icy composure was practically making the water vapour condense out of the air, it was so cold. "Give me one good reason why I shouldn't just kill you, here and now."

Had he not been currently occupied with saving his life, he might have wondered why it was that the water really DID seem to be condensing out of the air. "I… I…" he stammered.

She began taking slow, deliberate steps around the Pokémon towards him.

So, this was really it? Being killed by a vengeful spirit of a trainer he'd not only betrayed, but also had killed? His head sunk in defeat.

May seemed to recognise his resignation. "A little late for _regret_, now, don't you think, Butler?"

"Do whatever your heart desires," he said morosely. "I deserve all of it."

She faltered, stopping her advance a couple of steps away from him. She stared down at the simpering man, her angry look now being replaced by one of abject despair.

"_Why?_" she asked hoarsely.

He stared at her. "I… I wanted recognition from the team that shunned me. But it's been the stupidest decision I've ever made."

"You wanted to stay back in Forina and protect it," she said quietly. "I thought you'd left it all behind. Yet here you are, helping one of the most genocidal teams on the planet help bring about the end of the oceans as we know it."

He looked down, unable to meet her gaze. "Diane eventually left, after a while. I don't think I could have stayed there without her."

"But she's not here."

He closed his eyes. "We… we broke up."

"With your track record, you'd think she'd have done it a while ago."

He grimaced at her bitter remark. "I think I was part of the problem. She always found my shows entertaining, but I think she must have realised I was becoming increasingly obsessed with showing up Magma, who'd made so much fun of me before. She probably didn't want to attract any undue attention, so she ended our relationship peacefully."

"And then you went back to Magma."

"I was depressed!" he protested. "I needed something to… to validate my existence, or something. So I found an old friend I had within Magma and got her to give me… an audience. And that started the whole thing. We've been planning this operation for years. I'm not sure I ever really thought it through."

The girl sighed and sagged on her feet. "And now, because of your stupidity, there are Pokémon and Magmas out there _dying_ by the dozens and countless more being injured beyond what they can heal." She turned to stare at the miserable form of her Aggron. "… how are my other Pokémon doing?" she asked hesitantly.

"Your Aggron is doing the _best_ of them," he said quietly. "I did my best, but some of them are never going to be able to battle ever again."

Her eyes widened, then squeezed shut in grieving. "You have a _lot_ to answer for, Butler."

He was silent as she retrieved all the Pokeballs from the pile on the floor, filling her belt to capacity. Her Aggron was the last to go, transforming into red light and vanishing as she clipped it on.

"I don't think I can ever forgive you for this," she whispered. "But at the very least, you spared my friends. I'll spare you in return." She pointed down the hall. "Get out of my sight. I don't know where your Pokémon are being held, so you're on your own there. Find them, and then go and find some little dark corner in the world and stay there. Enough people have suffered because of your actions already."

She was walking off before he could even find the words to thank her for her mercy.

* * *

"Yes, me," Brendan said calmly.

The woman – he vaguely remembered her being referred to as 'Scythe' but that just HAD to be a nickname – opened and closed her jaw several times as words came and died on her tongue. Finally, she blurted out, "But… I - I killed you."

"Apparently not," he said laconically. Damn, he was enjoying her confusion too much.

Scythe shook her head. "This doesn't make any sense. Your eyes didn't adjust, you had no pulse, your heart had stopped, everything…"

Her gaze hardened and she shook her head more vigorously this time. "No. You know what? Screw it. I don't know how you survived, but I'm going to do it again and make damn sure you stay with Giratina this time. Let's see you live through being carved up into four pieces for a change." And then she lunged.

If there was one thing Brendan had been acutely aware of in his new form, it was that periods of extreme stress tended to cause him to zone out. Time would slow and his reactions – at least, that's what it looked like to other people – would increase in speed tenfold. Watching the battle in the forest when he'd been terrifying aware of just how little it would take for something to misfire and leave them all as roasted charcoal had let him view the whole thing practically in slow motion. Magma troops mouthed orders at a snail's pace. Every last drop of magma exploding out a Camerupt's back was visible to him. Nothing short of the exceedingly rare Pidgeot and Swellow had been fast enough for him to miss a decent look… and even then he'd been able to make out some finer details on occasion. Using that as a baseline, he could tell one thing right away about the woman before him.

She was _damn_ fast for a human.

She managed to cross the distance between them from a standing start in barely more than a few moments and was taking the first motions of a wild blade swing. Suddenly _acutely_ aware of what exactly he was dealing with, he ducked, letting the blade pass over him, and twisted, scooting under her arm and dashing for the staircase room. He wasn't attempting to run from her – as enticing an idea as that sounded – but he knew he wasn't going to match her in close combat. Not at that speed.

He turned his head just in time to dodge a throwing knife aimed at his torso. Okay, at range probably wasn't too safe either. Time to unleash his secret weapon.

Turning around fully to see her hurtling for him again, knife in hand, he fingered open the pocket containing the rock he'd picked up from earlier. Unlike May, who could spontaneously generate water whenever she needed from the atmosphere, Brendan had to carry his own ammunition with him.

He swung his arm up to point it at the incoming assassin, and the stone flew out of the pocket, a flying chunk of hard silicon oxides.

Scythe seemed to stare at the rock for only a moment before deciding a collision of stone on bone was not on her most-wanted list, but even so she was just a hair too slow in avoiding it, with it clipping her on the temple as she dodged to the side. Stunned by the blow, she promptly tripped on her own leg and crashed to the floor, where she didn't move.

Brendan let out a sigh of relief. That had been too close.

"Good toss."

He blinked and looked down again to see her picking herself up, only a little dazed. Celebrating a little too soon, much? "It wasn't a toss."

"Then what else?" she asked him irritably. She stood fully, rubbing the bruised area with a hand. "You suddenly gain telekinesis powers overnight?"

"… you could say that."

"I don't care enough to ask what you're talking about." She readied herself again. "Let's see you try it again."

"Okay." He flicked his hand backwards.

She tracked the movement of his appendage in bemusement, not having a clue what it was meant to do, and was rewarded as the same stone flew back from where it landed to smash her in the small of her back. She faceplanted magnificently into the floor.

Grinning, he hovered the stone lightly in front of him as she groaned and picked herself up again.

"How… how did you…?" she asked incredulously, staring at the levitating silica.

"I suddenly gained telekinesis powers overnight," he replied mildly. Yep, _way _too much.

"No, that's _not _it," she snapped, starting to haul herself up. "Tell me the truth."

He debated telling whether telling her the full story would have too big consequences for him later. He decided on an abridged version, if only because it'd get her off her pedestal of superiority. "I have Team Magma to thank for that. Groudon's power now flows through my veins. I don't imagine he'd be especially happy about how you've misinterpreted everything he stood for."

Scythe went silent, staring in shock, but then her face contorted and she hissed at him, "Idiocy. You think Groudon would not want this? After all the wars he has had against Kyogre for the express same purpose? Even today, they still would do battle."

"Trying to represent him? Big words coming from someone who tried to enslave their own god," he retorted. "My friend informed me once of a time many years back where you tried to use a blue orb to get Groudon under your control. I guess just that wasn't good enough, though, since now you're shooting for Kyogre too."

She waved a hand, clearly angered. "I wouldn't expect a thick-skulled child like yourself to understand. Just _die_." And she punctuated that last word with another lunge.

He realised too late that he probably should have been more pragmatic about the whole thing. She wasn't an opponent to be underestimated. Backpedalling, he sent his stone forward to hit her in the chest. She responded by ducking and promptly sliding straight under the projectile, using the smooth metal to her advantage. She quickly palmed a knife and hurled it to keep him off guard and unable to respond.

He wasn't about to entertain her. His mind now working at top gear, the knife missed by a large margin as he sidestepped and called the rock back as she closed the last couple of metres.

She swung at him in a direct attack. He dodged that one, too, but her free hand also came around and gripped him by the neck. With her blade hand still high in the air from the swing, she hauled him around to block the incoming rock.

Or, she would have, had Brendan not subtly adjusted his hand and sent it crashing into her fingers instead. She gave an unladylike yelp of pain and stumbled back a bit, more than enough time for the teenager to dash forward again, putting distance between them, with his rock following.

Clenching her fist in pain, Scythe's expression was one of pure hatred, a frightening visage when combined with her scarlet irises. She charged again, but a more controlled movement this time. She didn't want to fall for his silly tactics again.

She thought he was all about rocks? She thought wrong.

She closed the gap between them in less than five seconds, and made to swing her blade at his neck. His rock flew forwards from behind him intent on striking her on the head. With a blur of deft movement honed from years of fighing Pokémon one-on-one, she _deflected_ it, the cold steel ringing as the stone sailed off on some random trajectory. She nearly grinned.

Until Brendan's fist sailed through the air between them to sock her straight in the face.

He'd guessed the results might have been a little ugly due to his increased strength, but even so he couldn't help but wince at the gruesome cracking noise her nose made as her entire head snapped backwards. The rest of her body continued moving forward from its inertia, causing the back of her head to hit the floor with a loud thump.

Brendan stood back, debating on how to finish her off while still remaining sensible and humane (or inhumane?), but she was already getting to her feet, groaning in pain. Her nose had gone a cringe-worthy purple from the bruised flesh, a fact she seemed to be appreciating all too well as she lightly touched a hand to it and grimaced.

"You mad?" he asked.

Her face darkened. "Mad," she ground out, "was a minute ago. Now I'm just _pissed_."

As she charged once again, he wondered idly if pissing off someone hell bent on killing you was the best of ideas. On one hand, they might be so enraged it would impede their usual logic. On the other hand, it might make them deliberately ignore whatever consequences abounded just to see their target ruined at all…

The stone flew out once again, on target for her. With a contemptuous flick, she knocked it aside again, never once taking her eyes off him. He shifted his hand to send it into her back…

She contorted her body and the rock sailed past, missing by inches.

Now barely a couple of feet away, he twisted himself, catching her blade arm as his elbow closed in on her face. Simultaneously, his other hand shifted again, calling the rock forwards to strike her legs.

Her knee came flying up to smash him in the jaw as she tilted her head just enough for him to only brush her with his elbow. His head snapped up slightly painfully, so he was off balance when her other leg came up nearly 180 degrees to kick him in the chest and knock him over. The stone went sailing underneath to clatter uselessly on the floor. She then shook herself loose of his grip on her arm and held the blade high as his back met the steel panelling with her standing over him.

His eye twitched. She couldn't possibly have seen all that coming. Was she learning his patterns this fast?

Terror gripped him as he spotted the knife now starting to descend. His hand convulsed and the rock blasted upwards with absurd speed to hit her in the side. The blade promptly stopped its descent as she lost her balance and stumbled, but still had enough sense to swing out a leg and kick him harshly in the side in an attempt to keep him from rising.

Nonetheless, rise he did, just as she regained her footing and speared the knife forward, trying to impale him. An open palm intercepted her lunge and the black blade was smacked flying, saving his life, but leaving him vulnerable as her hand came up and sunk her fist into his stomach. Even with his increased resistance to physical attacks, he still felt pain blossom angrily in his torso. He doubled over, and was quickly followed up with a knee smashing into his face. As he went straight from leaning forwards to leaning backwards from the force of the blow, she sunk _another_ fist into the side of his head, knocking him even more off-balance. She would have sent another punch into his body again had he not lashed out blindly and slapped aside her arm. Before she could resume her assault, he shoved a palm forward, which had the double effect of roughly pushing her away and calling his rock one last time, which diced painfully into her thigh.

Both combatants stumbled away from each other.

* * *

For a moment, Scythe was purely content to just breathe hoarsely through her mouth. The last lucky hit had driven the air from her lungs, which burned painfully. She felt the lacerations dotting her body from all the sharp stone strikes she'd sustained.

After a moment to regain her composure, she looked up. Her opponent didn't seem particularly healthy, although she gave him credit for lasting as long as he had. Blood slowly trickling down formed a thin red line into his shirt from his newly ruptured nose and temple. He too was red-faced and breathing hard.

It hadn't been too difficult to figure out his general thought pattern… _after_ she'd already thought the same thing before and gotten a bloodied nose for her troubles. She wondered with some trepidation if he was still holding back or if he'd really exhausted his list of capabilities so soon. Judging by his rather worried look, he apparently didn't.

"You must think I'm some sort of affront to nature, right about now," he confessed.

Her eyes narrowed. "No, not really."

"No?" His brows rose. "No statements of heresy? Blasphemy? It sounds just like you."

She snorted. "I don't care either way. I've just been raised to do my job and do it efficiently."

He paused, slowly furrowing his brows, thinking of something. "You asked me, before you… killed… me why I decided to fight against Magma. But why do you fight _for_ them?"

"Because I enjoy the work." She smirked. "I've been asked that question several times before. There's little need for a woman like me elsewhere. Not exactly very many agencies out there looking for an assassin to work for them, huh?"

"But you don't actually fight because you agree with Magma's ideals?"

"Not particularly." She reached up to try and finger her sunglasses only to find they weren't there. Frowning, she twirled the knife in her hand instead. "Most of the people in this team aren't necessarily here because they agree with what we're doing, I'll tell you that much. It's more because they can't find anywhere else to go. Like me."

He looked appalled. "But think about what you're doing. Do you really have to effectively commit genocide of everything living in the oceans just to satisfy your stupid need to kill things? You can't just do that and expect everything to turn out just _fine_ afterwards!"

"Doesn't concern me." Scythe smirked. "And at the very worst, at least in the anarchy afterwards there'll always be a place for people like me."

Without warning, she lunged forwards for the last time that fight. Caught completely off guard, his eyes widened and he'd only just started to raise a retaliatory strike when her fist promptly met his face and crushed his ruined nose flat. His head snapped back, but Scythe was already dropping to the ground to do a vicious leg-sweep. The teenager's legs were knocked out from underneath him hard enough to make him hover horizontally in midair when she swung her fists down like a hammer to slam him into the floor, forcing the air from his lungs. He immediately tried to roll away, but she grabbed him by the nape of his torn shirt and hauled him bodily into the air again.

"It'll the death of us all!" he snapped, though his tone was laced with exertion.

She lost her smirk and narrowed her eyes. "Then time to prepare for yours." Twirling her knife into a ready-position, she raised her arm to deliver a fatal stab…

"_GET AWAY FROM HIM!"_ came a voice from somewhere behind her.

Her eyes didn't have time to widen before a jet of water as hard as steel punched her in the side, jerking the boy from her grip and causing her to stumble painfully into the railing of the stairs leading to the forest floor. The droplets of water from the dispelled attack in her vision abruptly halted and coalesced into a long thin tendril. She gasped and turned to regard the female newcomer, but didn't manage to get a glimpse of her assailant when the tendril lashed out again, striking her hard in the chest. She bashed into the railing again and she felt something break.

It wasn't her, though.

For a moment she flailed madly in the air in some vague semblance of regaining her balance, but gravity soon prevailed, and she tumbled over the edge of the chute towards the forest below.

She held the briefest sense of weightlessness as the air tore at her, before nature cruelly interrupted that too when she crashed heavily through the boughs of a smaller tree. She promptly felt at least three limbs jar agonizingly against the branches, which snapped in twain at the collision, but she managed through her daze to reach out and grab something, which met rough wood. Her palm was promptly sliced in several places, but it managed to arrest her fall just enough to make her landing somewhat survivable.

Not that it didn't _hurt_. Scythe hit the forest loam hard enough to elicit an excruciated gasp as her old wounds from her previous fight immediately began hurting to nearly unbearable levels.

After several impossibly long seconds of just lying pathetically on the floor, waiting out the first few searing moments, Scythe groaned and propped herself up on one elbow. Checking her body over mentally, she was semi-pleased to find she still hadn't broken anything. It must have been divine providence, she surmised. Not even luck could explain falling four stories and not even snapping a bone somewhere.

Standing again a little weakly, she glared at the spiral stairway she'd somehow not managed to land on during her fall. It was a shame. She'd have to kill the pair of intruders later, it seemed. She was in no shape to start taking them on as she was.

A bush rattled behind her. Eyes widening, she whirled around, reaching for her knife instinctively… only to find it wasn't there. "Damn it," she muttered.

She focused again on the brush. After a moment of staring, a single lone Weedle hopped out, returning her gaze inquisitively.

She gave it a disdainful look. Really…?

Around her, several other bushes rustled.

She twisted her head to see a variety of Pokemon from Kanghaskan to Vileplume to Beedrill all leaving the undergrowth to surround her.

_Angry_ Kanghaskan and Vileplume and Beedrill.

Scythe scowled coldly and raised her fists.

"Bring it," she said icily.

* * *

The creepy woman had only just vanished over the edge of the broken railing when May, with Yural following, rushed over to Brendan with alarming haste.

Inwardly, Yural grimaced. The male's skin had been cut in several places and the similar expression of pain that seemed painted on to his face indicated broadly of various other injuries he'd sustained. Despite the terror of his prior situation, he managed a grin. "Perfect timing as always, May."

Not bad, for a human.

May was practically babbling incoherently about how sorry she was for forcibly splitting the two up again despite her previous promises. "... and I had this ridiculous urge to just seek _some_ kind of… of… _justice_ for what they were doing and that's why I left in the first place…"

"Woah, slow down!" Brendan piped in quickly. "You'll pass out of oxygen deprivation if you keep going like that."

She visibly struggled to slow down her hyperventilating. "Okay, sorry."

"We should get you both somewhere safe," Yural interjected. "I've taken enough liberties to stay as long as I have. Most of the ground-based Pokemon in the assault have already been cornered around this area and they probably won't make it out, but we might still be able to get away through the treetops if we hurry."

They both stared at him for a moment before Brendan winced. "Ah, May, did you find anything?"

She blinked, but nodded furiously a second later. "Yes, I found them." She tapped the Pokeballs at her belt.

Yural had the faintest inkling that she wasn't quite telling the full truth there, but he decided not to press her. After all, Magma was closing in on all sides and the day was fast losing its light – when the Zubat and Golbat so common to Magma would be at their strongest.

With a few more choice words and some significant help from May to get Brendan on his feet, the trio promptly left the stair room, ambled back up to the balcony from earlier, and leaped back down into the branches to make their way back north.

Freedom.

* * *

**And there you have it.** **Rest assured it's not all over for our plucky heroes just yet - do you think Magma is going to be pleased at their enormous interference? And are they really beaten yet, for that matter?**

**And so we will find out... next time. Until then, stay tuned.  
**

**Signing off,  
grammaguy**


	13. Always a Smaller Fish Too

**DISCLAIMER: .Girafarig ro ,Ho-oh ,Eevee ,nomekoP nwo t'nod I**

**Hmm... I can make out three very unusual words in that disclaimer...  
**

**And a Merry Christmas to y'all, by the by! I've had a great December this year, including acing the exams set out by my university, and just spending the holidays playing League. It's a shame there was no annual nail-in-the-log competitions as we've had the past couple of years (it makes sense in context), or else the end-of-day festivities my family usually holds would have been that much more exciting. But alas!  
**

**This chapter doesn't have a whole lot to it. Dare I say it, it could be considered filler by some definitions. But I implore to nonetheless steam ahead with an open mind. There definitely some humour in there to keep you entertained.  
**

**Onward!  
**

* * *

Orbhunt - Chapter 11

Seagate Bay - Southernmost beach, bordering Greenlush Valley Reserve

Brendan gasped in pain as he wrenched his shoulder back into its socket.

He was quietly sitting on the very same rock he'd found himself sitting on a day ago, after he'd first discovered his power over the earth. Only now all he was discovering was that there was a very good reason they whisked you away to a hospital upon getting a dislocated shoulder instead of just fixing it right then and there. Even with his impressive pain threshold, the jolt was enough to make him flinch violently. He might well have passed out had he been his old self.

Rolling the appendage around a little hesitantly to test its range of motion, he found to his delight that – at least for the moment – there weren't any real side-effects to the injury. He wasn't sure how much of that was due to his new status, but either way he was grateful for it.

He hadn't even actually _noticed_ that his shoulder didn't quite look right until after they'd returned to Linoone territory and were attempting to revive some of their Pokémon. He smirked as he recalled how well _that_ reunion had gone...

* * *

_Gingerly setting Brendan back down on a flat patch of leaves, May reached around and undid her belt, which she also set down on the floor. She gave him an inscrutable look. "You or them first?"_

"_I'll be fine," he assured her from his lying position._

_Nodding, she picked up the Pokeballs and tossed them all into the air. "All of you, come out, now!"_

_Twelve bursts of red light later, the unconscious forms of all of their friends were lying on the ground also. Brendan winced at the injuries he spotted, but then frowned as he saw the badly-made bandages put over them. "Who did that?" he asked._

_May glanced at him, and then made a neutral face. "Butler. That man in white I told you about."_

"_Oh. Him," he said. He shifted a little, unsure of whether to actually tell her what he was thinking of. "We'd better get those off quickly and find something more suitable."_

"_Why?" May sounded incredulous. "They're all that's stopping the bleeding!"_

_He shifted a little in discomfort. "Yes, but those are obviously just torn up from a shirt of some kind. That's not good. If you don't use proper bandages you run the risk of infecting the wound and making it _worse_."_

_May's jaw dropped, but she quickly schooled it and turned to Hazal. "Have you got any Oran berries or anything that'll heal wounds left?"_

_The Linoone gave her a droll look. "We are not a charity, Miss Maple," he said dryly._

"_Hazal, please." She gave him her best puppy-dog expression._

_Not even a Pokémon a quarter her size could resist _that_ look. "Oh, fine." He turned to the other assortment of Linoone behind him. "Bring us twelve of an-"_

"_Thirteen," she corrected, indicating Brendan currently planking on the floor beside them._

"_Thirteen," he amended, "of any healing berries we can spare." He grunted. "I don't know how we're going to live through the winter at this rate…"_

_After the group had scampered off, May thanked the elder profusely and turned back to their Pokémon, who she quickly began analysing with extreme precision for any serious internal injuries. Though he was initially surprised that she knew how to do that and yet not know about properly sterile bandages, he probably should have expected it. As an accomplished Pokémon contest participant, she might have had to oversee her Pokémon for internal injuries sustained during particularly strenuous Appeal round performances. It was decidedly a lot more common than a Pokémon taking it much too far and actually wounding another one in the battle portion of the contest._

_Eventually, she got to her Blaziken._

_May barely even needed to glance at the wreck that was her starter before she broke down into despondent tears and howling that made his heart ache. From what he could see of the once proud fire bird, he was absolutely covered in bandages and caked in congealed blood everywhere the strips didn't cover. His leg in particular looked absolutely mangled, being bent at an odd angle and with _bone_ protruding from beneath its extremely thick set of bandages. Brendan didn't even know if you could recover from an injury that serious. Even the stoic Hazal looked utterly horrified by the mess._

_After thoroughly soaking the fabric on her Pokémon's chest with several minutes of agonized crying, May only lifted her bloodshot eyes as the remainder of Hazal's group returned clutching several Oran and Sitrus berries awkwardly in their mouths. After helping Brendan eat one of his own, which went some way to restoring his normal energy levels, the girl proceeded to completely silently manipulate her unconscious Pokémon into consuming them too, one-by-one. The whole thing took another five minutes because of the number of Pokémon and the gentleness with which May handled them, and Brendan felt his face nearly screw up in sympathy as she watched his friend's face struggle to blink back tears at each one of them._

_Eventually, they were all done. May, completely tired without even having done much actual work, sat back and waited helplessly for her Pokémon to awaken._

_The first one to show any sign of wakefulness was her Aggron, who was lying belly-down on the ground. Fitting, as he was arguably the least injured one of them all. "Argh…" the beast slowly muttered._

_Inwardly, Brendan had expected his voice to sound a little deeper, but he immediately quenched the thought as he watched May leap to he feet and kneel down so quickly beside him he swore she had to have grazed her knees._

"_Rono! Rono, I'm so glad you're awake!" She threw her arms around his neck, nearly giddy with joy._

_The heavily-armoured Pokemon opened his eyes with a huge effort. "Master?" he said quietly._

"_Yes, it's me, Rono," she said. She hugged him again. "I'm just… I'm just so glad you're awake," she repeated. She didn't need to say anything else._

_Rono grunted in discomfort. "Okay." He glanced over at the amused-looking Hazal. "You. What happened since I was last awake?"_

_There was a quiet pause, and May slowly drew back. "Er, Aggron, you should know something. I can understand you now. Like, actually understand you."_

_The Aggron's eye slowly tracked up to her. "My master is an over-emotional human female with a tendency for explosive bouts of physical violence. And she eats a lot." He paused dramatically. "Now what did I just say?"_

_May bristled. "I don't eat a lot! I'm just really hungry often! I'm offended you would even suggest such a… a…" She blinked. "Oh."_

_The ground seemed to shake as Rono's jaw vibrated along the ground with laughter. "Alright, I believe you."_

"_Er… and you don't…?"_

_He shifted. "If you can talk with me, you can talk with me. I don't mind either way."_

"_Oh… okay!" she said brightly. Then her mood dampened. "Aggron… you were… tortured, weren't you?"_

_He shivered. The massive, armoured Pokémon shivered. "Yes."_

_She sighed mournfully. "I'm so, so sorry, Rono. I've… I've failed you as your trainer completely-"_

"_No," he interrupted. "I am still alive and well and in your care again. You've done better than I could have ever hoped. For that, I thank you, master."_

_She shook her head. "Please, don't call me master. I want you to be a friend, not a servant."_

_He blinked. "If… if you say so, ma- May."_

_Her gaze slowly tracked over to her Blaziken, still lying pitifully on his back some distance away. "Toro probably won't agree with you, though. He's never going to walk straight ever again, let alone jump or battle or do any of that stuff. And it's all my fault…"_

_Aggron tried to lift his head to look at his fellow Pokémon with a herculean effort, but succeeded only in dragging his head a couple of centimetres. "How is the old fogey?"_

_She shook her head. "I don't want to talk about it."_

_They were stopped from making further conversation as a groan echoed from both Brendan's Swampert and May's Tropius._

_The next few minutes saw the revival of just about everyone else except for May's Blaziken. The general reunion went something along the lines of: Pokémon groaned as they woke up, May squealed and hugged them for all she was worth, and then the considerably more varied reactions to their ability to understand what they said came next. Some reacted with indifference, others were ecstatic. May's Minun, Mino, quickly took advantage of it to go on a hilarious rant about exactly what was wrong with every flavour of Poffins and Pokeblocks May made for them to eat. The girl seemed on the verge of tears before Mino finally ended it there and threw herself into the surprised May's arms, tacking on a heartfelt, "But I forgive you, May!" with it._

_The Beldum which she'd literally caught just before the whole fiasco started had merely stared at her before making a few beeping noises, as incomprehensible now as it had been before. But at least it didn't appear to resent her for being subjected to the torment. It had quickly been christened Bolo afterwards._

_May wasn't even attempting to stop her eyes from watering at the whole thing. Hazal looked _this_ close to breaking out into manly tears. Brendan just wiped away a lone droplet at the edge of his eye and bore with it like a badass._

_But still, putting a damper on the mood of it all was Blaziken, who was still lying prostrate completely motionlessly on the ground. Nobody in the clearing was about to remind everyone about him, but nobody ever really forgot about him either. Eventually, after a lot of almost-idle chatter between the thirteen Pokemon and trainers, the older Linoone slowly crept up to May and whispered something in her ear. _

_Her face immediately went stony and she nodded. Wasting no time, Hazal dashed off to do something and returned shortly with a large group of Linoone. Between them, the group slowly lifted the Blaziken off the ground with the whole lot of them watching in concern, and he was promptly carted him off to someplace._

_May quickly changed the subject to ask if anyone was thirsty, which earned her about a dozen replies of, "Yes!" She directed them towards the beach where they'd been the previous morning. As they all slowly plodded off with a tired sort of triumph, Brendan's Swampert stayed behind to give his beloved trainer a hand in standing up._

"_Oh, and master?" Swampert prompted._

"_Hmm?" he replied. Unlike May, Brendan hadn't made too big of a deal about what their title for him was. Though he'd made it clear to them that he didn't mind what they called him, they'd all continued to call him master. Old habits die hard._

"_Your arm looks broken," the Water-type pointed out bluntly._

* * *

… which, of course, led to his current position of sitting on a rock rolling his arm around for flexibility testing. His loyal Swampert was basking next to him, having just thoroughly enjoyed a long, relaxing soak in the waters which had done wonders for his complexion. On the beachhead, he could see the entire rest of his team frolicking in the shallow waters, May among them. Hazal was merely standing back on the very same rock they'd awakened on after May had hauled them both out of the water yesterday afternoon, alertness dominating his countenance.

"I would watch that arm for the next few days," his starter murmured to him, causing him to turn his head. "It'll probably be very easy to break again for a short while."

Brendan chuckled. "Thanks for looking out for me, pal. It's good to have you back."

"So it is," he rumbled. He slowly turned his head to stare at the human. "Brendan, may I ask something?"

"Of course."

"You can talk to Pokémon now. How?"

Brendan went very still. "Why ask me this now? You didn't seem all that concerned when you first woke up."

"That's part of why I'm asking you." Swampert shifted a little in apparent unease. "There is something different about you. Something that made me stop at first."

Ah. There _was_ that, wasn't there? "It's… hard to explain," he began.

Swampert waited patiently for him to continue. "Go on," he urged, after a moment of silence.

Brendan sighed. "I should really have brought you out at some point during the first raid, shouldn't I? Long story short, Magma tried to create their own Groudon and Kyogre for themselves so they could conquer the planet and all that, and we sabotaged it but got dunked in magical liquid for our troubles. Next thing we know, we both wake up as captives, are executed in cold blood and thrown into the sea, but we survive somehow. Then we go back piggybacking on a forest Pokemon invasion because you're still captives and presumably being tortured. We get you out and then get out ourselves, with a few confrontations here and there."

His Swampert was quiet for a moment. "So… the talking Pokémon thing?"

"Oh, sorry, I should show you this too." Bringing the rock out of his pocket and setting it on the ground as his starter watched curiously, he waved a hand and the rock gently lifted several inches off the ground.

If he was surprised by the revelation, he didn't show it. "Hmm."

Brendan raised an eyebrow. "Just 'hmm'? No, 'OMG THIS CANNOT BE' or exclamations of 'WTF'?"

"Nnnope." Swampert had fallen back into laconic mode. "So you're basically Groudon."

There was a pause. "Yeah, pretty much," he admitted. "Are you okay with that?"

Another pause. "Eeyup," Swampert muttered before shutting his eyes again to go back to sleep.

Brendan chuckled before ruffling the fins on his starter's head affectionately. "I love you too, bro."

* * *

"This game is just stupid."

May's face was a rictus of annoyed concentration as she directed a small burst of water into a tiny stone on a larger disc of rock that had been conveniently hewed out of the larger shore boulders. The small stone skipped perfectly on to a disc of painted concentric circles in the middle of the rock… and straight over it to clatter uselessly over the other side, with her Minun skipping out of its way, grinning.

May scowled. "Very stupid."

"Only because you're new to it," Tropius said reasonably. "Given some practice, I'm sure you'll be Stomping all of us in no time."

"Until then, I'm more than happy to humiliate her repeatedly," Minun said cheerily. "My turn!" Picking up the same rock May had used, she focussed and quickly sent a quick burst of electricity from her cheeks into the rock. The super-heated air around the impact point detonated, sending the rock skidding lightly into the second-to-centre circle, right next to three others with identical scorch marks.

"Who wants to bet May can't skip a rock on the ocean for five bounces?" Mightyena suggested smoothly. May's eyes widened.

"Yeah!" came the chorus of enthused replies.

"Now wait just minute here!" she snapped. "You can't just force me to do things you'll only laugh at me for!"

"Yes, we can," they all replied.

She slammed a fist into her palm. "Objection!"

"Overruled."

"I refuse!"

"Take it or leave it."

"I want a different game!"

"Too bad."

"Can't we at least go back to the rock-shooting?"

"Maybe if there was a 'please' somewhere in there," Delcatty allowed.

"Fine. Please?"

"Nah," they all said.

"Don't I get a say in this?"

"Definitely not."

May seemed to billow up, red faced. "This is mutiny! Rebellion! Insurrection! Revolt! Uprising! Cheekiness!"

"Don't care."

"You… you are all so…!" May looked just about ready to explode with rage, and for a fleeting moment all of the Pokémon on the beach had just the faintest thought that maybe, just maybe, they might have taken it a bit too far in their teasing…

May sighed in defeat, collapsing onto her back against the smooth stones. "You win," she mumbled.

The Pokémon all shared a collective chuckle and a few of the younger and smaller ones clambered over to the resigned trainer to snuggle her and generally just reassure her that no, she wasn't about to be humiliated yet again. May just sat up and snuggled all of them back with a good-natured laugh. The older ones remained where they were, with Tropius sneaking out a few well-marked leaves to play what looked like a Pokémon variant of poker.

Above it all, Hazal watched the various groups with a wistful look on his face.

* * *

The door to the control room swung open with such force the handle dented the metal where it met the wall.

Scythe, looking quite possibly as horrendous as _anyone_ had ever seen her, followed it and staggered into the room. Numerous gashes and bruises dotted her exposed skin – of which there was quite a lot, considering half of her undershirt and pants had been ripped away, leaving little to the imagination. Her sunglasses were missing, and an angry weariness was easily visible to everyone in her scarlet eyes. She still clutched her infamous knife in her hands, although now it was marred with several nicks and scratches from some epic battle the people in the control room hadn't known of.

To her credit, in spite of her condition she managed to make it four steps before her legs failed her and she crashed to her knees in an ignominious fashion. And there she sat, breathing heavily.

Maxie seemed lost for words. As he always did. "Scythe…?"

She lifted her head to stare at him, her eye twitching. "You choose now to remember my name…? Only _now_…?"

He lifted his hands, and averted his eyes to avoid locking eye contact. "Scythiona. Please. You need to see a medic. We can handle things here."

"Just like you've handled everything else so far?" she asked acidly. She very slowly shook her head from side to side, which gradually sped up as she spoke.

Maxie sighed. "Things have been hectic, but we doubt there'll be an attack similar to the last any time soon. Our systems are extremely close to firing again now that's we've mostly repaired all the damage. You can rest for a while."

"No. I need to command the security teams again. I don't trust you to do it properly."

"And _I_ need you to get to a medic and get those wounds dressed. You're in no state to start barking orders like you usually do."

"You're doing it again!" she said angrily, hauling herself to her feet despite the protests her body gave her. "It's a need-to-know, thing, isn't it? That's _always_ it."

"No, this is looking out for your well-being," Maxie replied flatly. "I need – _want_ you to see a medic. Now."

She scowled and began to pace, ignoring the continued pain her legs were emitting. "You've made a ridiculous farce of this whole operation," she said darkly, ignoring his orders. "I am probably the single biggest reason you've not failed yet through your own incompetence. And despite all of this you never seem to quite trust me with big decisions. Are you still pissy about me planning this escapade with Butler so many years ago behind your back? Or am I too powerful for your liking as it is?"

"Scythe…" Maxie said warningly. "Don't bite the hand that feeds you."

"My loyalty lies with Magma, not you," she said scaldingly. "Don't flatter yourself."

Maxie looked about to do something drastic at the huge amounts of insubordination she was spouting, but seemed to compose himself after stewing over the idea for a moment. "Just. See. A medic. Please."

Scythe likewise glared at him, going over a few courses of action in her head, before whirling around to stalk back to the door. "If you fail this one more time…"

She left, leaving Maxie in the room with his palm to his forehead in a drained gesture. The technicians in the room slowly began to return to their work after the considerable killing intent flooding the room left along with its owner.

* * *

"Her water control is atrocious," Swampert said irritably.

"She's _is_ new," Brendan pointed out.

"Still doesn't make her any less atrocious."

"Well, it's a relative thing… she's bad compared to you, maybe, but some other non-water type might not agree."

His starter only grumbled in response.

Brendan and Swampert had come down to the beachhead to join the group, where, despite her better judgement, May had agreed to try stone-skipping, which was basically the same, but with a twist – you had to use your own water techniques to assist the rock in bouncing. All that led to quite impressive chains – Delcatty and Hazal, who only had cursory knowledge of Water-type moves at best, had both managed to string together nine bounces. Swampert had merely scoffed at the 'amateur' attempts and had promptly smashed both of their egos with a rock that bounced nearly _twenty-three_ times before it finally sunk, barely more than a small dot on the horizon.

May? She'd managed three. After about a dozen tries. Even Brendan had managed to get five in just two tries somehow and he couldn't even control water.

"Yours was definitely beginner's luck, Brendan," the exasperated teen insisted, hurling another rock. It didn't even bounce once, fading under the water with a deep 'plunk'.

Idly, he plucked another rock from the beach and gave it a calculated toss. It bounced four times before it stopped. "Yeah, I can see that."

"I'm supposed to be the sarcastic one here, you're awful at it." Picking up a particularly bulky stone, she exerted all her anger on it in one hate-filled cry and a massive swing. It flew perhaps nearly fifty metres out to sea before making a huge splash visible even at that distance. "I really needed to do that."

The onlookers all shared a collective laugh, and slowly dispersed after May loudly declared she was taking a break (to much consternation). Said girl slowly walked over to Brendan, a happy look on her face.

"It's so... enlightening being able to talk with them," she said. She looked out to sea. "Maybe it might make up for all of this, all that I've seen and heard and done."

He followed her gaze. "Maybe. We still got our whole lives ahead of us, unlike those people who can only just speak with Pokémon after spending all of it just getting there. It'll be a novel experience."

She tilted her head in thought. "Do you think… do you think that we should try-"

She never got to finish that sentence, for a deep, bloodcurdling howl of anguish echoed throughout the countryside at that moment, instantly quenching all notions of conversation. Both teenagers' faces went pale.

"Is that…?" May whispered.

"… I think it is," he replied equally quietly.

May was already on the move before he'd finished speaking. Wordlessly, he followed her back into the forest, urgency hastening his every step.

* * *

The first sign of trouble as May approached the general epicentre of the Linoone dens was fire, which licked at groups of bushes as if it were a hungry intangible being. The more experienced Linoone were fiercely firing Water Pulses to try and douse the flames, though with the source of the flames still raging nearby they weren't having much luck beyond stopping the flames from going too far.

Blaziken was roaring in the middle of a scorched circle of earth betwixt the trees, flailing wildly and jettisoning streams of fire every which way. May couldn't make any sort of coherent words out of his panicked screams, but knew he needed to be stopped before he could cause serious damage.

First, coercion. "Blaziken, stop!" she yelled.

Unsurprisingly, he did not hear her, but she hadn't been expecting him to. Feeling a little queasy at the thought, she pulled her small globule of water out of her canteen again, which bobbed obediently in the air next to her.

What could she do? This amount of water would probably only evaporate into so much steam next to the sheer amount of fire that Blaziken was putting out. But there weren't any other sources nearby.

Brendan appeared beside her, followed shortly by his starter, who was panting heavily from the quick sprinting. "What's going on?" the teenager demanded.

Swampert stared at the carnage. "He's confused and lost. And I don't think he's taking the loss of his leg too well either." For once, his voice lacked its usual dry, acerbic sarcasm.

"Buddy, douse him," Brendan ordered. "We have to get him to calm down."

"How do you know he won't take that as an attack of some sort?" May asked worriedly.

"I don't. But we have to do something _now_."

The Water-type had opened his maw, forming a whirling ball of water in the form of a Hydro Pump. He released it as an extremely concentrated jet of water that exploded into steam upon contacting the raging Fire-type's body. The storm of flames exuding from him quickly halted, causing May to wince in guilt as he was sent rolling along the ground haphazardly.

Thankfully, her starter already appeared to have exhausted himself with his flailing. As the water stream petered out, he did not begin thrashing again, instead just staring up at the canopy in a dazed manner.

May was already halfway to him as soon as the attack stopped. Her feet crunched into burnt plant material and the heat singed her feet, but she ignored it as she desperately knelt down over her starter, crying, "Blaziken… Toro… please, it's me, May, your master. Please, calm down. Please…"

The panicked Blaziken's eyes took just a tension-filled moment to gradually focus on his trainer, fear and confusion giving way to an odd mix of hope, relief and hesitation as recognition gradually dawned on him. "M-master?" he croaked in an extremely deep, baritone voice.

"Shh…" she urged. "It's okay. You're safe now. You're in the forest north of Route 117."

He quieted. "I'm… I'm safe…"

"Safe," she said gently. She lifted his torso up to hug him affectionately, a little awkwardly due to how much larger he was than her.

A few of the Linoone surrounding them were approaching the site a little cautiously, wary of any sudden outbursts but simultaneously acutely aware of the tender scene taking place. Brendan and Swampert had gingerly made their way over to them and were observing the reunion with sympathy in the former's expression and amusement in the latter.

"Hey, asshole…" Blaziken began. May jumped, startled at the incredibly blunt use of language.

He continued, "How long was I out?"

"About a day, and a half," Swampert, presumably the owner of such a dubious title, answered him.

"A whole day…" he muttered, sounding unhappy. "What happened during then?"

"Why don't you ask them?" was the amused response.

He frowned. "They can't understand me."

"You sure about that?"

May slowed pulled back to look her starter in the eye. "Toro… I can understand you now. I know what you're saying."

The gobsmacked Blaziken's eyes widened. "What? Since when did that happen?"

"It's a bit of a long story…" she said sheepishly. "And there's more to it than just being able to talk with you…" She cast a glance at Brendan.

The male blinked, unsure for a moment of what she was expecting, before realization dawned on him. Pulling the new rock he'd picked up from the beach out of his pocket, he gently hovered it over his open palm.

The Fire-type's jaw dropped. "I… I don't, uh…"

"Maybe later," she cut him off. "This is an awkward place to talk about it."

"It is," a nearby Hazal said coolly. "Nice work torching the place, by the way," he added, sounding more than a little annoyed.

"Shut up," Blaziken growled, causing both May and the Linoone to draw back in surprise. The venom in his voice was more than enough to stave off any aspiring dark remarks. "You weren't tortured in cold blood for the past eighteen hours, so show a little respect."

May sighed. "Oh, Toro…"

* * *

**Boom! If I had to name a personal favourite character, it'd probably be Swampert. A dry, deadpan and blunt individual, he is. If only I had his wittiness.**

**Until next time.  
**

**Signing off,  
grammaguy**


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